US "the Enemy" Says Dotcom Judge

First time accepted submitter Flere Imsaho writes "During the NetHui Internet conference last week, the NZ judge to hear the Dotcom extradition case was speaking on the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement and how the U.S. entertainment industry is pushing to make region code hacking illegal, when he said 'Under TPP and the American Digital Millennium copyright provisions you will not be able to do that, that will be prohibited ... if you do you will be a criminal — that's what will happen. Even before the 2008 amendments it wasn't criminalized. There are all sorts of ways this whole thing is being ramped up and if I could use Russell [Brown's] tweet from earlier on: we have met the enemy and he is [the] U.S.'"

Comments

one of the most beautiful quotes I know.

[Johann Lau]

Traces of nobility, gentleness and courage persist in all people, do what we will to stamp out the trend. So, too, do those characteristics which are ugly. It is just unfortunate that in the clumsy hands of a cartoonist all traits become ridiculous, leading to a certain amount of self-conscious expostulation and the desire to join battle.

There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tinny blast on tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us.

Forward!

-- Walt Kelly

I heard "we met the enemy, and he is us" a million times before I bothered checking out the full quote, and I think it's kind of a shame to truncate it like that.

(and yes, I know this is off-topic, I don't care :D)

Re:Easy solution for Australia (And NZ?)

[Tastecicles]

In the UK we have this thing called the Trade Descriptions Act 1968, which among other things prohibits misdescription of goods. A DVD-video must by definition comply with the DVD-video standard (Part 3, Book B and DVD Video Recording Book) or it CANNOT be referred to as a DVD video.

Now, people do still have choice over whether or not to purchase a barcode for a particular title. If one does purchase a DVD video, then he has a statutory expectation that that is what he is getting. There is NOTHING in the standards to cover region locking, CSS encoding, or any other restrictive mechanism. ANY DVD that employs any of these mechanisms CANNOT claim to be a DVD-video.

Having made the choice to purchase a barcode with the DVD-Video logo, if one then finds out that one cannot play that DVD in a standard, open-region player (lots of Chinese players are not region locked hence will play ANY otherwise compliant disc), then IMO there would be a case under 1968 (c. 29).

My boggle with the region coding thing is the fact that unless specified on the box that a player is region-free*, there is no indication whatsoever on the hardware or the packaging (or the manual!) that the player is region locked and to what region. This is clearly a violation of 1968 (c.29)?

*Since DVD-video units hit mainstream in around 1997, I've been aware of the region coding and studiously avoided region locked players, unless there was a clear-cut and simple way of jailbreaking them. The only player I ever had to jailbreak was a Meridian 586 (bought near the end of 1997 and cost a bloody fortune).

Re:Then buy NZ music

[ccguy]

If you buy music produced in the US you buy it under the terms of the license.

No. If I buy music (from any country) in Spain I buy it under Spanish laws. Anything else, feel free to shove up your ass, license included.

Re:And the U.S. law is YOUR law now too

[beltsbear]

US oil is harder to refine and will choke refinery that is not designed for it. That being said it is used in pretty much every purpose that middle east oil is used for, it is just refined in the US and used here. The US uses more gas then diesel so we also have refineries that crack down more of the diesel into gas (which is an inefficient process because diesel is more energy efficient to start out with).