Perens Backs Down from DMCA Violation

liquidsin writes "According to this article by Dan Gillmor, Bruce Perens has backed out of his plan to demonstrate how to modify a DVD player to break region coding (and openly violate the DMCA as well) due to pressure from his employer, Hewlett Packard. I wish HP had given him their blessing on this, but I guess they have to worry about shareholders first..." See our previous story for Perens' plans.

Comments

Re:HOWTO: Civil Disobedience

[Plutor]

From the parent: "Well, it wasn't a government authority, it was a capitalist one. Which I suppose says more about his convictions than we'd like to know."
(Implying that Bruce is only concerned with Money)

From the article: "HP funds Perens to pursue a variety of free software projects."
(Explaining the Bruce was concerned with his ability to continue working on your free software)

Re:You want HP to do what?

[bskin]

How can you possibly expect any company to openly endorse a law-breaking event?"

Gee, because its already happened and is happening. Companies that openly endorse breaking the law:

Microsoft (monopoly, unfair competition)

Yes, they spent all the money on their defense because they were openly endorsing that they broke the law.

Nike (child-labor in 3rd world countries)

Yes, they love to advertise this fact. (And I'm not sure what they do is against the law, either. It may not be right, but that's not the same thing as illegal.)

Enron (corporate fraud, embezzlement, cooked books, insider trading)
Global Crossings (corporate fraud, embezzlement, cooked books, insider trading)

And that worked out so well for these companies.

Martha Stewart's company (corporate fraud, embezzlement, cooked books, insider trading)

You seem to have a good deal of trouble distinguishing between endorsing something openly and doing something illegal. Not to mention confusing individuals within a corporation with the corporation itself.

The reason there's such a mess in the market right now is because shareholders are not happy with these actions. People broke the law, and the companies and shareholders got fucked. It's quite rare that a public company is going to openly do an illegal action and not only admit to it, but "endorse" it.

--b.

Re:HOWTO: Civil Disobedience

[Bruce Perens]

Yuk yuk. HP felt that it would not be possible to decouple the company from my actions - and that damage to their Linux program would likely take place if I went ahead with my efforts. That program does nice things for Samba, Debian, LSB, etc. So, I had to prioritize. I made my point against DMCA, as what went down with HP was a pretty good demonstration of its chilling effect on free speech. A better demonstration, indeed, than if I had done my trivial DMCA violation and got away with it. I'll continue to work on this. It would be nice if you would, too.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:HOWTO: Civil Disobedience

[Bruce Perens]

There were no blacklist threats. I became convinced that I'd hurt HP's Linux program if I went ahead. My boss was very considerate, he even flew out to give a preamble to my talk explaining HP's position.

Bruce