Frequently, law is used and interpreted as nothing more than mere words on paper. Every part of government uses it this way these days, and frequently corporations and individuals do as well. The legislature makes a law, the courts enforce it - to the letter - and the people look at what happens and wonder what the hell is going on.
What do a 17 (now 20) year old man convicted of a felony for oral sex, mixtape producers, and, now, consumers of most MPAA-supported media have in common?
They - we - are all victims of a judicial system unwilling to fulfill it’s original constitutional purpose of checking the legislature’s purpose, and providing a balance of power.
Let’s start with the 17-year-old. Everyone in the courtroom - judge, jury, prosecution - agreed that the 15-year-old girl voluntarily performed oral sex on him, and even initiated the act. Had he had vaginal sex with her, it would have been a misdemeanor. But due to an old Georgia law, it was a felony carrying a minimum sentence of 10 years. The jurors didn’t know this when they convicted him, and were outraged when they found out. Around the same time, the Georgia legislature revoked the law - but not retroactively, so the court would not change his sentence because the legislature was careless. No one thinks he should serve the full 10 years - without parole, I might add - in prison. But no one is willing to change the judgment. The governor has not granted a pardon. The courts have not adhered to the spirit of the legislature’s act of changing the law, choosing not to extend it to this young man. No blame can be laid on the legislature, as making laws is their business, not enforcing them. Instead of checking their power and balancing their carelessness, however, the judicial and executive branches of the state of Georgia have decided not to do anything.
Next up is mixtape artists. (Read more here) This is a more recent issue, and an ongoing one. Mixtapes are a simple concept that has survived the CD era quite well - basically, underground promotional media. Mixtape producers take existing songs - sometimes from published media, sometimes recorded as a personal favor from the artist, and sometimes handed to them under-the-table by record execs - and mix them with other songs, sometimes as separate tracks and sometimes as remixes. In the rap and hip-hop scene, this is even common in the industry - most songs borrow samples or some other element of other songs. Anyway, these mixtapes (although now CDs, the “tape” moniker stuck) are sold at flea markets and the like, and often increase artists’ exposure. Until now, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America, also known as a music cartel) allowed this to go on despite the fact that they violate copyright, because they correctly figured that it was good marketing for their artists. In fact, as mentioned above sometimes the record companies would literally hand the mixtape artists recordings of unreleased songs to test their popularity, even paying the artists to put them on their tapes. Recently, however, the RIAA has conducted raids together with SWAT teams on a number of mixtape artists. They are probably legally in the right to accuse mixtapes artists of copyright violation, but that does not change the fact that they encouraged mixtapes and used scare tactics to get a SWAT escort. The New York Times reports in the linked article that the police were told to expect weaponry and drugs. Although not stated outright, it can be assumed that this is what the RIAA told them, playing upon unreasonable stereotypes of rap artists. And nothing explains why there were RIAA representatives present - wearing nothing more protective than a branded windbreaker - to conduct the raid, and tell the police what to take. Nor can anything explain the vast quantities of legally purchased music that was stolen from the artists as part of these raids. Yet the mixtape artists will probably be convicted, because the law says they did something wrong, despite that they encourage new works, which is the spirit of copyright. And, for that matter, the RIAA has expensive lawyers.
Finally, consumers of nearly all MPAA-supported media are, or soon will be, victims of this same problem. Let me introduce you to a law known as the DMCA - the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Nice sounding name, isn’t it? Too bad the name is non descriptive and it’s a bad law. Notably, it does have some good provisions in it. But one of the bad parts - and a VERY bad part - is that the DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent DRM (Digital Rights Management) technology. Why is this a problem? Let’s say you have a laptop, and you’re going on a trans-Pacific flight. That’s a 15 hour flight. You want to watch some movies, and don’t want to bring along a stack of DVDs - maybe because of the bulk, maybe to protect the disks. Well, it’s illegal to rip the DVDs. They have DRM on them - not very good DRM, it takes a modern computer a matter of milliseconds to crack it - but DRM nonetheless. In fact, every DVD player that isn’t licensed by the DVDA - including all DVD playing software on Linux - is probably illegal, as it circumvents the copy protection. Likewise, the new HDDVD and Blu-Ray standards have even more DRM on them. Not that you’d want to rip them - weighing in at 20GB per disk, you may just want to bring them along. But maybe you have one of these new “Media Center PCs” with Windows Vista. It has a high-def disk drive (Blu-Ray or HDDVD, doesn’t matter) and a good video card, so you can hook it up to your brand new HDTV. If you’re unlucky, the video card doesn’t have copy protection support and you can’t watch the movies in HD. Isn’t that stupid? Now, if you’re lucky, or talked to a knowledgeable salesperson, you probably have the right kind of video card and the right kind of HDTV - they both support HDCP (High-Dev Copy Protection) over HDMI cables. The video card will talk to the TV, they’ll authenticate, and you get HD content. On a good day. There is of course the possibility that the TV or PC will get bumped in just the wrong way - and then the video cuts out for a second while they re-authenticate. Sound unlikely? Many Playstation 3 (which is really a Media Center PC, not a game device) owners had this exact problem.
Now, maybe you bought an HDTV a year ago, and want to watch HD movies on it. So you go to the store and buy an HD disk player. You make sure the cables match - you have DVI on your TV, and the player has DVI out, so you figure you’re good. You get home, you hook it up, and put in a disk. But it’s not HD - your HDTV has an on-screen display that tells you what resolution it’s at, and HD content is definitely supposed to be better than that. So you check the player’s manual, and it says you need and HDMI connection to play high-definition content. So you go back to the store, and ask if they have an HDMI-to-DVI converter. They have it, and so you buy it and take it home with an HDMI cable. You hook up the converter. Still no HD. So you take the HDMI converter back to the store, and ask why. They tell you you need to have HDMI from the player to the TV, so while you’re here would you like to shop for a new HDTV? You restrain yourself from yelling at them and reminisce about when TVs lasted more than a year. Not to make this too long, my point is you CAN’T buy converters like that. Even if a company wanted to make them, they’re illegal, since they circumvent DRM. Go return your HD player and just buy DVDs. They’re cheaper anyway.
All this because courts are unwilling to put a cap on stupid laws. The tide is turning, though it will take a lot of angry consumers to actually change anything. So get angry. Forget congressmen - unless you can hire lobbyists, you’re not likely to make much of a difference. Write to judges. Only they can make a change now.
