🚀 go-pugleaf

telford@xenon.triode.net.au wrote:

> Mostly it stands up because the US courts (especially the lower courts)
> have a very pro-big-business attitude. The higher courts will sway as
> the government can push them but the current governments of both US
> and Australia are also supporting big business so it is only sensible
> to expect some similar sentiment in the courts.

I think these tales tend to improve with the telling. The well known 
Reimerdes case, for example, is painted as the big end of town 
surpressing the rights of DVD owners to play DVDs on their Linux systems.

But read the Judge's opinion:

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/DVD/NY/trial/op.html

which paints a rather different picture. At the end of the day, this was 
a case about someone making software available whose sole practical 
function was to enable piracy. The software was not a Linux DVD player, 
and the average Linux user would not have been able to use it to play 
DVDs under Linux.

While it may be argued that the DMCA makes it difficult or impossible 
for people to exercise their fair use rights (under US law), I've yet to 
see a case where someone has been sued for activities genuinely related 
to fair use. In practice, fair use (and free speech, etc.) have merely 
been raised as pretexts to justify activities that were in fact simply 
performed for the purporses of piracy pure and simple.

> 
> 
>>However, the DMCA is not always required. Microsoft's XBox requires that 
>>software be signed using a private key known only to Microsoft, thus 
>>again protecting a business model that probably subsidises the price of 
>>the XBox by having a higher price for the software. This mechanism can 
>>only defeated either by modchipping (which is probably legal still, but 
>>not something most people want to do)
> 
> 
> Certainly, it is illegal to distribute mod chips or provide a service
> of installing them. Maybe you are right that it is legal to own one
> and install it yourself but what would you be willing to bet on the
> outcome? If the Microsoft Palladium initiative gets into full swing
> then most computers will have similar lockdown.

I still believe it to be legal to distribute or provide an installation 
service for chips whose sole function is to enable the running of 
software not licensed by Microsoft, including the Linux OS. It's true 
that I'm not about to start such a business myself, because of the 
uncertainties. In practice, I also have to wonder whether there is 
really a market for such chips, even if they are legal.

Whether Palladium is really the bogy man is hard to tell, given the lack 
of concrete detail (last time I looked, which was admittedly a while back).

> 
> 
>>or by factorising the private key 
>>(which is being attempted, but they've Buckley's hope of success with 
>>the current mathematical framework).

And, oops, of course I meant factorise the public key (or rather the 
public modulus).

> In addition, some
> people noted that an X-box connected to the network would automatically
> seek to update itself and even delete software that it detected as
> foreign (e.g. xbox-linux partitions). I have not seen this first hand
> but I've heard reports of it. Someone else might have more info...

I have to wonder about that. It would almost certainly be unlawful for 
Microsoft to do that intentionally.

> Quite right, any DMCA equivalent also needs to be attacked,
> or at very least, a lot of additional "fair-use" provisions have to
> en enshrined such as the ability to have a competitive marketplace.
> We really do not need more laws to mess things up even worse, what
> we need is less laws, a clarification of existing laws and strict limits
> on the application of those laws.

We see to agree pretty much there. However, when I think about the DVD 
issue, I'm reminded that being a Movie Studio is not a licence to print 
money. Making movies involves taking big financial risks, and a lot of 
work. You have no real need to watch movies in general, let alone a 
specific movie, and there is even less compulsion to watch them on DVDs, 
so it's perhaps a bit much to insist that you be able to buy a DVD from 
which you can extract data to use as you see fit. Yes, that would be 
nice, but it would come with a cost. The cost is that piracy is alive 
and well, and it is difficult to see how it doesn't cut into the incomes 
of the people doing the work to make the movies. That in turn must 
impact on the number and quality of the movies that get made.

Even with region coding, which I dislike intensely at an emotional 
level, I find it hard to produce an object argument to support the 
notion that the people who created the works in question shouldn't be 
able to restrict when they are made available in different parts of the 
world. Turn it around, and ask yourself how you'd feel if you'd done 
some creative work, and then other people felt they were entitled to 
tell you what you can do with it.

Sometimes there are no right answers.

Sylvia.