Just forwarding this announcement that came in for the group. BTW, potential good news about the list and web hosting, but I can't say anything as yet until early next week until everything has been agreed (if agreed!).
To those that are currently offering hosting - my humble thanks to all, and hopefully we should know next week where things are heading.
Regards,
Martyn (aren't weddings a bugger to organise) Drake
-----Original Message----- From: Jim Peters [mailto:cd@uk.eurorights.org] Sent: 09 September 2001 17:26 To: Martyn Drake Subject: Help us fight the EUCD by leafletting about copy-protected CDs
CAMPAIGN FOR DIGITAL RIGHTS, UK ACTION DAY, SATURDAY 15th
Please help us fight the EUCD and avoid more cases like that of Dmitry Sklyarov by distributing leaflets outside major record stores in your local town centre this Saturday.
I'm writing to all the UK Linux user groups to invite them to join us in this action. We are planning a nationwide leafletting campaign to raise public awareness about the new copy-protected CDs that the major record labels have started to sneak into the UK, and to use this issue to raise awareness about the EUCD, the DMCA and the case of Dmitry Sklyarov.
Check out our leaflet, which we hope will make the man in the street and his family say "Enough is enough!":
Here is some background on all of this, in case any of these issues are unfamiliar to you:
Dmitry Sklyarov: ---------------
I hope you have already heard about the case of Dmitry Sklyarov, the Russian cryptographer who was arrested in the USA after presenting a paper at DEFCON in which he exposed weaknesses in Adobe's eBook encryption. He faces up to 25 years in jail if found guilty. Check out the campaign in support of him:
http://www.freesklyarov.org/ http://www.freedmitry.org/
He was arrested under America's new controversial DMCA laws.
The Campaign for Digital Rights: -------------------------------
This is a UK group that formed to handle action in support of Dmitry here in the UK - it is linked off the freesklyarov site. Already two protests have taken place in London. Check out the web-site for details of these, and for mailing lists, flyers and other materials:
Soon after its formation, it became clear that the case of Dmitry Sklyarov was just the tip of the iceberg, and that the CDR could usefully campaign on much broader issues. For one thing, coming soon are the European equivalents of the DMCA laws, known as the EUCD, which have yet to be passed into law (they must be passed in each country individually). There is a chance that we may be able to make a difference here before it is too late.
The new copy-protected CDs: --------------------------
These are the record manufacturer's latest ploy to put an end to MP3s and digital copying of CDs. They have developed a format which intentionally corrupts the error correction code on a CD, forcing a normal CD player to error-correct constantly, and even to interpolate and fabricate parts of the sound.
They have been releasing these into the shops to see if anyone notices the difference, hoping that by claiming that there was no increase in the rate of return of these CDs, that they can justify putting all CDs into this format. They have released one million of these CDs into the UK alone.
When ripping tracks from one of these CDs using a computer, naturally the CD drive complains about all these badly corrupted blocks, so it is impossible to rip the CD in the normal way. It might be possible to extract digital audio from CD drives that have SPDIF outputs, but in any case the audio quality of the CD can never be full CD-quality due to all the intentional corruption.
Our campaign: ------------
We believe that the public will be outraged if they learn what the manufacturers are trying to do, and so we hope to give the public this information, and encourage them to act on it. That is the purpose of the leaflet.
If there is enough public pressure on the record stores, this will be an extremely embarrassing situation for them, and they will be forced to choose between supporting the public (who keep them in business) or supporting the manufacturer. I'm sure you can see how this could be a potent force to help improve the situation.
In addition, the media attention this would generate will allow campaigns against the EUCD to have much more credibility, giving us a chance to make a difference before it is too late.
How you can help: ----------------
Even a single person handing out 500 leaflets in their local town centre this Saturday can make an enormous difference. If a group of you can get together, you could cover all the major record stores in your locality. If there are even more volunteers, you could make placards and get even more public attention. It's up to you.
Apart from organising action in our own localities, we hope to help you by providing materials and a central point for coordination. We have the leaflet mentioned above ready for you to print out and take to a copy-shop, with another more general flyer coming soon to print on the reverse. On the CDR site there are also further EUCD and DMCA-related materials that might be useful for larger protests:
http://uazu.net/cd/ http://uk.eurorights.org/
If you're thinking of leafletting in your area, check out the following page to see if anyone else is planning to do so as well. You could get in contact, and pool resources:
http://uazu.net/cd/volunteers.html
If there isn't someone already listed there for your locality, and you'd be willing to put up your contact details, please E-mail me this information at the address below. I need: the location you intend to cover, your name or the name of your group, plus some contact details (E-mail address and/or phone number):
mailto:cd@uk.eurorights.org
If you're not available on that day, but you know someone who might be, or some other group I might not have contacted, please forward this message to them. Particularly, user groups, if you have a mailing list, please let everyone know about this. The more people we can get involved, the better.
If you want to keep in touch with further developments after this weekend, please join either the announce list or the discussion list at the CDR site:
Well, thankyou for reading all of this. I really hope that we can make a difference this Saturday and start to turn the tide against these extremely unpleasant plans from the media giants.
Jim Peters
-- Jim Peters (_)/=~/_(_) Uazú (_) /=\ ~/_ (_) jim@ (_) /=\ ~/_ (_) www. uazu.net (_) ____ /=\ ____ ~/_ ____ (_) uazu.net
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Martyn Drake