Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Perens Backs Down from DMCA Violation

Posted by michael on from the talking-the-talk-and-walking-the-walk dept.

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.

2 of 352 comments (clear)

  1. Re:HOWTO: Civil Disobedience by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Informative
    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

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  2. Re:HOWTO: Civil Disobedience by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Informative
    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

    --
    Bruce Perens.