[kwlug-disc] are you going to be a criminal?

[Chris Bruner]

John Van Ostrand wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
>   
>> Discussion might help to focus on what the shortcomings of the bill
>> are and - more importantly - what constructive suggestions we can
>> make.
>>     
>
> Let me float these ideas around. Do they make sense?
>
> Digital lock anti-circumvention laws are bad because:
>
> 1. They allow corporate interest to supersede the rights of licensees granted in the Copyright Act and patent law,
>     - They allow content holders to extent copyright life, or apply restrictions to public domain content,
>     - A digital lock is forever, A company can extract royalties for the rights to access protected content for ever.
>
> 2. They provide a way for business to more easily obtain a monopoly on a technology,
>     - Business will abuse the law in many ways to prevent competition or circumvent other laws or rights,
>
> 5. They will not prevent copying,
>     - Pirates are often the first to circumvent digital locks, do so off-shore and distribute unlocked copies,
>
> 6. They encourage the use if inferior encryption technology,
>     - Why use a suitable technology when the law can be applied to simple and easy to break locking schemes,
>
> 7. They pander to the foreign interest, not the public interest,
>     - Large corporations are generally the beneficiary in this,
>     - Licensees will lose some rights afforded by the Copyright Act,
>
> 8. They prevent free development of software,
>     - Linux, used by all sizes of business, will be less powerful and less able to compete,
>
> 9. They are bad for local economies,
>     - If forced to migrate from Linux and open source software, money for licenses and support will be sent to foreign companies, instead of local companies,
>     - Local software developers whose products access protected content will have to pay royalties forever (beyond patent and copyright laws) to technology owners,
>
> 10. They can hold my own content hostage,
>     - Digital locks on proprietary binary formats may be enforce on content like word processing documents, databases, or other data files making my own content a hostage of the software vendor.
>     - Can I break a digital lock to try to recover my data from a corrupt file?
>
>
>   
I like this list. I'm going to write to my MP again, this time not so 
hostile :) to explain why DRM is bad. I'm going to use this list.