Date: Sun, 20 May 2001 14:56:47 -0700 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Rahul Siddharthan" <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> Cc: "Greg Lehey" <grog@lemis.com>, "Don Wilde" <Don@Silver-Lynx.com>, "Anders Nordby" <anders@fix.no>, <freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG>, <core@daemonnews.org> Subject: RE: [dn-core] Re: Perens' "Free Software Leaders Stand Together" Message-ID: <000001c0e177$c3efbbc0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <20010520130810.A52134@lpt.ens.fr>
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>-----Original Message----- >From: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG >[mailto:owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Rahul >Siddharthan >Sent: Sunday, May 20, 2001 4:08 AM >To: Ted Mittelstaedt >Cc: Greg Lehey; Don Wilde; Anders Nordby; freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG; >core@daemonnews.org >Subject: Re: [dn-core] Re: Perens' "Free Software Leaders Stand >Together" > > > >Which is what the EFF is doing. But they could use help. Not just >money, but expert advice. Aren't there enough experts in the BSD >community? > >An "amicus curiae" was filed in support of the EFF's position. >Signatories included RMS (of course), but also Avi Rubin, Brian >Kernighan, Marvin Minsky, and various others, many of them >academic/university researchers. Was there anyone from the BSD world, >which has always been well connected with academia? >http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/DVD/NY/ > >Guiding public opinion on these things is important too. Plenty of >linux people have made well-argued statements in the media. If any >BSD people have, I missed it. > >Anyway, this is quite a big topic... not sure it's appropriate on >this list. > It probably isn't, but Sunday's a slow day and I don't think anyone will shoot us... I can't speak for other countries but the United States has Freedom of Speech written into the constitution, so really, making the posting of DeCSS illegal is pretty much fundamentally at odds to that. Everyone knows this, of course, but knowing what's right and getting an illegal law passed in favor of you and your cronies are two different things. In this case the MPAA didn't copyright the DeCSS code, so there's no copyright infringement there by posting the code, and only the act of using the code is the violation - you can't go after the people that told you houw to do it. Similar issues have happened with, for example, the Physics student who several years ago wrote a thesis explaining how to make a crude atomic bomb, based completely on unclassified materials. It pissed off the DoA, (who promptly reclassifed a few key items) but they couldn't go after him, although if anyone had actually tied to _make_ a bomb, then there would have been a variety of laws to use to go after them. It's clear to many legal authorities that the DMCA violates the US Constitution in many places. But, just because a majority of people may run around claiming it does, this means nothing legally in the US. If you think that well-argued statements in the media against the DMCA, or an "amicus curiae" in support of the EFF, matters at all to the judge/jury and outcome of this case, you don't understand the US court system. The only thing that really matters today in the US Court system is the amount of money that each of the litigants can use to pay lawyers. The only thing that will help the EFF to get the DeCSS case won, and ultimately get the DMCA overturned, in this case is lots of donations. But, it really doesen't stop there because that would only affect US law - there's still the matter of laws in other countries. Personally, I really think that the whole DeCSS debate is pointless anyway. Obviously, the MPAA has the money to replace CSS on DVD's with a new encryption standard, and they have the contracts in place with the DVD manufacturers to require "copyguard" chips to be included in all DVD players. Whether they win or lose now, it's a moot issue because DeCSS exists thus CSS has been broken. It seems evident that their only choice is dumping CSS and replacing it with a new scrambling system. My point of view is that this is just a natural progression of the movie, or "content production" industries. Years ago, Hollywood realized that they had to control not only the manufacture of, but the distribution of movies, as a result they got their fingers into all of the theatres. Today, they are still there, although they don't outright own theatre chains, they retain control of content distribution in theatre with contracts. When video tape and other electronic playback technologies came out, the movie studios decided they would just ignore them, and see what would happen. Now, they are finding that the electronic distribution channel is so big that they have to do the same thing all over again as they did 50 years ago with the theatre chains. The difference now is that the distribution channel is not just people like Blockbuster Video Rentals, but it's also people like Sony who produce the equipment that the media gets played on. Ultimately, your going to see the movie studios win this one, because they really do have a monopoly on movie entertainment production in this country, let alone the world. It's like people trying to go up against the DeBeers company, and break open the diamond monopoly. Diamond production is a monopolized industry and all of the major governments of the world have basically signed off on this. Well, movie production is a monopolized industry, and all of the major governments of the world have signed off on that too. Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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