Newsforge: Stallman, Torvalds, Moglen share views on DRM and GPLv3

Open and frank discussions about developing licenses which secure digital access rights. Dialogue about points which concern people in developing a good fit for purpose. Shame there is not this kind of access to the development of the DMCA.

In Australia we have been invited to submit requests for exemptions to DMCA for Fair Use and for innovation and cultural development. But, as the law basically comes to Australia as a fait accomplis from the US as part of the Free Trade Agreement, room to move and room to define what is right for our communities and businesses is not central to the framework but negotiated as a concession to the laws primary objectives.

These concessions are likely to be negotiable again when a new generation of DMCA, currently being negotiated in the USA, comes calling with the next trade round. Given that the first DMCA overturned fair use as a default right, and made even the concessions for negotiated fair uses dependent on the effective function of technology locks which may not be interacted with, its hard to imagine what can be taken with another round.

Hopefully it will become obvious to all participants in this process that the DMCA is patently a bad idea, and that the whole process of importing laws in the interests of a foreign business lobby is recognised as unrepresentative and therefore dangerous. There are certainly already better models on offer, and who knows what could be developed if there was actually open dialogue on the issue:

http://trends.newsforge.com/trends/06/08/02/2210213.shtml?tid=147