From: whs70@dancer.uucp (24411-sohl)
Subject: Copyright infringement, etc. was:Re: Ways of chilling or banning Usenet
Reply-To: whs70@dancer.UUCP ()
Organization: Bellcore, Livingston, NJ
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 92 15:02:42 GMT


>I (Bill Sohl) wrote:
>>....  One need only look at the inability of the
>>recording and movie industry with regard to that industry's desire
>>for restrictive legislation against copyright infringing duplication
>>of movies anbd audio recordings.  There has yet to be any law passed
>>that even partially addresses movie/recording piracy, etc.

>George Finn posted in reply:
>	This is interesting.  How do you explain the repeated arrests
>for movie/recording pirating?  Living in Los Angeles I often hear
>reported FBI and local arrests for this, often accompanied by film of
>thousands of cassettes or VHS tapes being confiscated.  Pretty wierd
>considering "There has yet to be any law passed that even partially
>addresses movie/recording piracy, etc".
>	I don't think that you are well informed on this subject.

To which I would like to clarify:
Enforcement of existing laws is not what I was commenting on.
The actual illegal copying, pirating, etc. has been a violation
(copyright, etc.) for many years.
There are those in various industries (movies, recording, etc.)
that would "outlaw" various technologies and/or specific equipment
that can be used to make illegal copies, etc.  None of the 
proposed legislation to do so has ever passed (yet).

Even today, the inclusion of a copy protection scheme (SCMS) within
consumer digital audio tape (DAT) recorders is being done by
the manufacturers on a strictly voluntary basis.  There is NO law
that requires SCMS circuitry to be so included.

There are also various video signal modification devices (black boxes,
etc.) that can be used to defeat the anti-copy signal spike found in many
prerecorded videotape movies.  The spike causes a duplicating VCR
to think there's a high level signal present and the duplicating
VCR then records the duplicate tape at a lower signal level
resulting in a poor quality duplicate.  The movie industry would
like legislation passed that would make it illegal to manufacture,
sell and/or posses tthese "black boxes."  These devices are
available in any newstand video magazine's advertising section.

So, I'll more carefully restate my original comment.  The various
recording industry segments have had little or no success with
any new proposed legislation that would place limits on or
otherwise curtail the availability of equipment that can be used
in the duplication of copyrighted recordings.  Furthermore, the
reason (IMHO) for the recording industry's lack of success has been
largly due to the fact that the various legislations proposed
would severly impact ALL recording (both illegal and legal) and
the legislators have been unwilling (thankfully) to implement
anything which will negatively impact legal recording, even  if
it still allows illegal recording to continue.

By analogy, for every copyright vilolated .gif file of a "Playboy"
picture that transits this nebulous entity called Internet/Usenet, etc.
and may be temporarily "stored" as a file on a user site,
there are likely hundreds of non infringing messages, posts, email,
etc.  As such, the predominant use of Internet, etc is non-infringing
and I still completely doubt that any legislation will ever be passed
that can/will do anything to restrict the operation of Internet or 
any Internet site, etc.  Perhaps that is overly optomistic, but that's
my opinion.

Standard Disclaimer- Any opinions, etc. are mine and NOT my employer's.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Sohl (K2UNK) BELLCORE (Bell Communications Research, Inc.)
Morristown, NJ             email via UUCP      bcr!dancer!whs70
201-829-2879 Weekdays      email via Internet  whs70@dancer.cc.bellcore.com
Newsgroups: misc.legal