Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 12:05:53 +0200 From: Szilveszter Adam <sziszi@petra.hos.u-szeged.hu> To: freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: MacOS Themes, was RE: Windriver, Slackware and FreeBSD Message-ID: <20010418120552.D3210@petra.hos.u-szeged.hu> In-Reply-To: <006e01c0c7dd$fd2c1b80$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>; from tedm@toybox.placo.com on Wed, Apr 18, 2001 at 01:03:01AM -0700 References: <20010418091652.A27000@lpt.ens.fr> <006e01c0c7dd$fd2c1b80$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>
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On Wed, Apr 18, 2001 at 01:03:01AM -0700, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: > This is fallout from the Napster decision, I wouldn't worry about it, > and indeed the entire Napster thing is just a rehash of the lawsuits > over the copy protection software that took place back in the 80's. While I agree with this, I think the situation is a bit different. Today is some sort of gold-rush on. Although most companies and other entities who stand behind this crazy drive for ever-stiffer copyright laws know full well that this cannot go on indefinetly (sp?), that in the end this will bring innovation to a screeching halt, that it will eventually even slower the economic growth instead of accelerating it, but they hope to have made it rich by then and also hope to have created a playing field with a lot fewer players where they can later confortably play (as in monopolize) This behaviour is utterly unresponsible, needless to say. But it seems to work, for the moment. This will influence law-making in the short and perhaps medium term, even the judicial system cannot be elevated above the society where it operates. The drivers of stiff copy-protection regulation are strong, a whole lot stronger than even thousands of letters to your congresman can be. This is essentially a balancing act: For as long as these regulations "only" hinder you at hacking on your OpenSource (in the eyes of the world a synonim of free) project, or at using your lawfully acquired copy of that latest hit CD in "unapproved" ways (many do not even know that you can play CDs with a computer, so to them a "ripping-protected" CD is not a problem!), decision-makers will not feel that urgent need to do something abt it. Remember, they are surrounded by lobbying groups the whole day, each of which tries to sell "their" cause as something earth-shattering, so they just become sceptical after a while, esp since many of the lobbyists are professionals who work for hire and can sell any cause like that. Judges are no exception either, they see no problem in ruling against somebody who acts "irregularly" unless they do feel that there may be more to this tham it meets the eye. Unfortunately most lawyers are at best neutral towards computers in general and do not appreciate OpenSource or hacking in particular. They are consumers of this technology, they do not care how it is created. But the balance will kip as soon as say, (as I read in the news the other day) they start going after housewives who trade (or better still, traffic in:-) patchwork designs over the Net instead of each buying the magazines for themselves as it was meant to be. Why? Because there a whole lot more housewives doing patchwork or embroidery or whathaveyou than there are OpenSource hackers, and this activity - in contrast to computer-related ones - is not merely tolerated and at best heroized (wow. such word probably doesn't exist, but hey, we just created it) in the news media by persons who don't know jack about what it's about, but a respected pastime. Also, there are many lawyers whose wives do it and they will say: "But I know her, she is not a criminal. This thing cannot be a crime!" This is when the balance kips, and when (possibly) new exceptions are enacted to existing copyright laws, of course provided that the "players" have not yet managed to change peoples' habits to the point where this can be omitted (as in: everybody uses WMA now because it's the default in XP, so the bad old mp3 format can be phased out, and since you cannot do this and this with WMA, no need to allow it either. After some time most people will not even know that such thing was possible at all, they'll just make do with what they have. This why controling information == controling people. You don't know it, you don't miss it.) Just my HUF 0.02... -- Regards: Szilveszter ADAM Szeged University Szeged Hungary To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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