1. Jurisdiction: He wrote the program in Russia, complying with Russian law. He works for a Russian company. The company sells the product, not him. This product is *legal* under Russian law. It's not just a case of Russian "hackers" getting away with something because of shoddy law-enforcement in their country, it's actually *allowed*. Furthermore, the software which his circumvents is *ILLEGAL* in Russia (because it does not have provision for making a backup copy of the data it uses).
2. Fair Use: What fair use?;-) This has been beaten to death, but I must mention it simply because it is so compelling. I am allowed to copy things for my own personal use. You can try to stop me with anti-copying measures, but if I succeed there is nothing you can do about it. Which means that a device that allows me to do this cannot be illegal. (this is all supposing that fair use rights have not been summarily thrown out the window by the DMCA).
3. Punish the crime, not the tool. This is my own personal opinion, but I think the US could really look to this when making laws. I can kill someone with a ballpoint pen, and it would still be murder. I could also do this with a gun, a knife or just about anything. It is the murder that is the crime, not the gun (or pen, etc.). I know many do not agree with me on this, but we need to draw the line somewhere. Making extra penalities for commiting a crime with a certain weapon or possessing a weapon that enables you to commit crimes is simply stupid. Similarly, just because I have the tools to commit copyright infringement doesn't mean I will do it. I used to download songs from Napster that I already owned on CD just because it was a pain to rip them all.
4. Code is Speech. If you claim that it is not, please explain how RSA encryption was exported as a book, or how DeCSS can be printed on a T-shirt. Anything that can be written in a book or on a T-shirt is speech, and is protected (as long as it isn't a death-threat or a threat to national security).
5. The DMCA sucks.:-) The above are most of the reasons. It is a law that was passed after huge lobbying efforts by enormous corporations for one purpose only: their own bottom line. It was not passed to protect the artists or writers, give me a break. It was passed to protect the publishers. They need to get the message that if widespread pirating is being done, they need to focus on quality of service and ease of distribution. Why didn't the VCR kill television or movies? Because it is easier to pay for cable and a better experience to go to the movies. Plus you can RENT tapes. As long as a CD costs $18 there will be a poor college kid trying to pirate it because he DOESN'T HAVE THAT MUCH MONEY.
Those are most of the reasons I could think of off the top of my head.
It just may not work (depending on the ages of the modems) in areas where the Metricom poletop transmitters are still active. (I suspect that this was done so that people would not create peer-to-peer networks that interfered with the service they were trying to sell.) On the newer units, the peer-to-peer mode seems to "shut off" if a poletop radio is "acquired."
I have mixed feelings about the demise of Metricom, myself. Properly used, the technology could have had great benefits. However, the company was arrogant and poorly managed. At one time, K N Energy (the local gas company) announced that they were going to deploy Metricom in our town. Neither they nor Metricom had given consideration to the fact that a wireless WAN serving many community organizations and some of the schools ran on the same frequency band. (The Metricom equipment -- dozens of transmitters running at the maximum legal output -- would have blown the other users right off the air.) The existing users made a reasonable request before the City Council: If Metricom was going to monopolize a public resource -- the 900 MHz band -- they should pay at least some of the cost of moving the schools and small business users to another band. But Ralph Derrickson of Metricom (the CEO until the bankruptcy) arrogantly refused to make any such concession. Fortunately, K N Energy's management was not so coldhearted, and agreed to help the community network move to another band if Ricochet was to be deployed in our city. (The network was never deployed, however, as K N Energy dropped its Ricochet franchise shortly thereafter.) The story is at http://www.lariat.org/metricom.html.
It may have been a similar lack of consideration for others (prices too high for the market; poor customer service) that led to Metricom's recent economic problems. $80 per month for 128 Kbps or less simply wasn't competitive with DSL, and there are not enough mobile users to support such a system by themselves. $29.95 per month would be more like it.
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2. Fair Use: What fair use? ;-) This has been beaten to death, but I must mention it simply because it is so compelling. I am allowed to copy things for my own personal use. You can try to stop me with anti-copying measures, but if I succeed there is nothing you can do about it. Which means that a device that allows me to do this cannot be illegal. (this is all supposing that fair use rights have not been summarily thrown out the window by the DMCA).
3. Punish the crime, not the tool. This is my own personal opinion, but I think the US could really look to this when making laws. I can kill someone with a ballpoint pen, and it would still be murder. I could also do this with a gun, a knife or just about anything. It is the murder that is the crime, not the gun (or pen, etc.). I know many do not agree with me on this, but we need to draw the line somewhere. Making extra penalities for commiting a crime with a certain weapon or possessing a weapon that enables you to commit crimes is simply stupid. Similarly, just because I have the tools to commit copyright infringement doesn't mean I will do it. I used to download songs from Napster that I already owned on CD just because it was a pain to rip them all.
4. Code is Speech. If you claim that it is not, please explain how RSA encryption was exported as a book, or how DeCSS can be printed on a T-shirt. Anything that can be written in a book or on a T-shirt is speech, and is protected (as long as it isn't a death-threat or a threat to national security).
5. The DMCA sucks. :-) The above are most of the reasons. It is a law that was passed after huge lobbying efforts by enormous corporations for one purpose only: their own bottom line. It was not passed to protect the artists or writers, give me a break. It was passed to protect the publishers. They need to get the message that if widespread pirating is being done, they need to focus on quality of service and ease of distribution. Why didn't the VCR kill television or movies? Because it is easier to pay for cable and a better experience to go to the movies. Plus you can RENT tapes. As long as a CD costs $18 there will be a poor college kid trying to pirate it because he DOESN'T HAVE THAT MUCH MONEY.
Those are most of the reasons I could think of off the top of my head.
Alex Belits, a true Metricom packet radio fan, has lots of information on this at http://phobos.illtel.denver.co.us/~abelits/metrico m/.
I have mixed feelings about the demise of Metricom, myself. Properly used, the technology could have had great benefits. However, the company was arrogant and poorly managed. At one time, K N Energy (the local gas company) announced that they were going to deploy Metricom in our town. Neither they nor Metricom had given consideration to the fact that a wireless WAN serving many community organizations and some of the schools ran on the same frequency band. (The Metricom equipment -- dozens of transmitters running at the maximum legal output -- would have blown the other users right off the air.) The existing users made a reasonable request before the City Council: If Metricom was going to monopolize a public resource -- the 900 MHz band -- they should pay at least some of the cost of moving the schools and small business users to another band. But Ralph Derrickson of Metricom (the CEO until the bankruptcy) arrogantly refused to make any such concession. Fortunately, K N Energy's management was not so coldhearted, and agreed to help the community network move to another band if Ricochet was to be deployed in our city. (The network was never deployed, however, as K N Energy dropped its Ricochet franchise shortly thereafter.) The story is at http://www.lariat.org/metricom.html.
It may have been a similar lack of consideration for others (prices too high for the market; poor customer service) that led to Metricom's recent economic problems. $80 per month for 128 Kbps or less simply wasn't competitive with DSL, and there are not enough mobile users to support such a system by themselves. $29.95 per month would be more like it.