Re: Paypal WAS: PostgreSQL speakers needed for OSCON

Quoting Bruno Wolff III <bruno(at)wolff(dot)to>:

> On Wed, Jan 07, 2004 at 01:57:02 -0500,
> "Keith C. Perry" <netadmin(at)vcsn(dot)com> wrote:
> >
> > True but in some case "enabling" is also a crime. Take the case with the
> guy
> > who wanted to make a dvd player for linux. Even though he did nothing
> illegal
> > the circuit court still deemed it illegal for the exploits and methods for
> DVD
> > encryption to be available since in their option the only reason to have
> that
> > information would be to copy a DVD with is "illegal". Again this guy gets
> a
> > negative denotation associated with him because he, in reality, did nothing
> more
> > than expose a technical failing in a technology and then use it to complete
> a
> > project. Had commericial companies been more receptive to software DVD
> player
> > at that time, weakness in the technology might not have never been exposed.
> It
> > actually funny how we treat people sometimes.
>
> John wasn't in the US. The MPAA tried to make an example of him by
> pressuring
> the Norwegian government to go after him. Just with in the last week the
> goverment decided not to appeal the case any further.

Ahhh, thanks for the update. I didn't realize he wasn't an American citizen.

> DVD encryption is not useful against real pirates. They can just copy the
> entire DVD. It is used to enforce region codes and macrovision by forcing
> DVD makers to aggree to that as part of their license to get decryption
> keys so that they can make DVD players that can play encrypted disks.
> Fortunately many of the Asian DVD player makers know that consumers don't
> want DVD players which enforce region codes (and to some extent macrovision)
> and somehow their test mode codes that disable these features somehow manage
> to leak out on the internet after their product is on the shelves in major
> markets.

I never got that region thing (thus in my mind it had to be a marketing ploy).
Gotta love Asia for having for some foresight on that on.

> Depending on where you live it isn't necessarily illegal to make copies
> of a DVD, especially if it is a backup copy for your personal use.
>

Heheh, I'll leave that discussion for another thread :)

--
Keith C. Perry, MS E.E.
Director of Networks & Applications
VCSN, Inc.
http://vcsn.com

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