Except that there is a quirk in the US legislative process in that it is possible for laws which violate the US constitution to come into existance.
Hence, the reason I threw the world "constitutional" into that statement. If the Constitution is a document placing limits on the powers of government, then an unconstitutional law is one where the government breaches the rules laid out for it in some way. This should invalidate the law, making its application impossible. Therefore, you can be morally (though maybe not legally) justified in violating such a law - it may even be your moral duty in defense of the Constitution to fight and violate that law, otherwise the Constitution as a check on the power of government is rendered toothless.
IIRC, isn't everything from government SPECIFICALLY excluded from copyright, as it's all done using the people's money? That applies to state governments, too, who write the building codes...
According to the article, the building organization attacking our hero wrote the law and just handed it to the state to pass.
Private groups writing laws and handing them to legislative bodies for rubber-stamping...where have we seen this take place before *coughDMCAcough*? Only this time it looks like the body wants to make a buck off the law people are expected to follow.
This also creates a situation where a powerful private group with certain interests can draft a law heavily in their favour, get it passed by friends in a legislature, and keep it hidden from public view in order to keep people from seeing what their tax dollars went toward passing. Secret bodies of law? Rules that benefit a privileged few while no one else can see they exist? Sounds like paranoid fantasies, but this story goes to show such bizarre thoughts aren't too far from the realm of possibility.
That's it. I'm going to hide under the bed. Call me when the nightmare's over.
Welcome to America(tm). Home of the Free(tm). We invented freedom, and we copyrighted it. You may license it for a small (enormous) fee. - mensch.
Thanks to the heavy private, closed, corporate influence in and of groups like WIPO, the WTO, and the drafting of documents like FTAA outside of public view, this is becoming a frightening possibility. Private groups controlling laws you're forced to obey, in effect taking the powers of the state with none of the checks or balances, and making a good amount of money from it, is the kind of nightmare depicted in Kosh-knows-how-many speculative fiction works. How fun to watch it unfold in front of our very eyes.
I wonder if the term "RICO" could be apply here...it certainly seems like a lot of these "non-profit" (HAH!) organizations are running rather lucrative rackets.
This is from the "I-want-to-disturb-any-conference-I-want-to-withou t-any-governing-powers-looking-over-my-shoulder-wh ile-I-do-it" department.
Or maybe the "protesting-the-drafting-of-a-document-meant-to-af fect-700-million-people-without-letting-even-1-of- those-people-see-it-beforehand" department.
Nah. Couldn't be. Those protesters were just kiddies and pinkos. My democratically-elected government knows best. They'd never do anything not in my best interest. Never.
Federal law applies to interstate commerce. According to United States Constitution , article 1, section 8: "The Congress shall have power... To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states."
Hmmm...I would think that would rip the guts out of any "choice-of-law" clause, unless (as I'm guessing here) there are no federal laws regarding online interstate commerce and licensing.
Ok, so here we have a case of a Washington company dealing with customers in Maryland. The WA company tries to place itself under WA jurisdiction. The MA people are under MA jurisdiction.
Since this appears to be a circumstance of interstate commerce, wouldn't it just be a helluva lot easier and more sensible to deal with this on the federal level? Who has jurisdiction over interstate commerce in the US? What laws, if any, would apply?
And how did you guys get into this mess in the first place?
In other stupid school administrator news...
on
Sean In The Middle
·
· Score: 2
...a 12-year-old New Jersey girl was threatened with three days of suspension...for using sign language on a bus?
Also note the link to the school district's site in the comments...give 'em hell.
At this rate, blind people will be suspended for bringing white canes to school...
I have to wonder, in the midst of all this madness...what the flying fuck is going on around here? Who started handing out the stupid pills, and why are they so fucking popular with school administrators?
A $3500 "off-the-shelf" DVD-capable laptop is small comfort for those of us that purchased DVD drives and decoders long ago, and will probably never see drivers, binary or otherwise, released by the companies we purchased the equipment from.
Quite frankly, the DVD business is the only reason I still have Windows installed, and I keep watching the em8300 (DXR3/Hollywood+ card) driver releases, as well as Xine and OMS developments, for the day I can get that crud off my drive and I can happily watch DVDs on the platform of my choice.
I'm appreciative of good teachers and administrators as well; a few good teachers are the reason I didn't just give up on high school completely after a first couple of really, really crappy years. I don't think "appease[ing] the majority" requires letting their kids be thugs while the victims get tossed out for even thinking of fighting back.
Actually, I think a lot of parents would love to see a legitimate crackdown on bullying and in-school terrorism. Unfortunately, the policies that are put in place to prevent just this sort of incident from happening are forgotten, only to be remembered and applied with extreme prejudice when someone who isn't part of a larger group mouths the word "gun". What I wouldn't give to see the proper application of zero-tolerance policies with regard to physical and verbal abuse...then again, school populations would likely fall by as much as half, with all the explusions.
Maybe that would be a good thing; let the people who wish to learn remain, boot the idiots who refuse to be taught and let them learn on their own.
A million maybes...and no answers. Although, a good way to start might be a parent or victim standing up to say "Stop. This is wrong, and it needs to be changed, and I bet I can find one million people who agree with me."
What is the idea here? This kid's a typical fucked-up kid and he gets in trouble.
I think the idea is that the other fucked-up kids that have been harassing and abusing him didn't get in trouble. The lack of an actual investigation in favour of a knee-jerk expulsion probably didn't help.
Quite frankly, if Sean was "fucked-up", as you describe him, that final rejection would have probably triggered the kind of shooting nightmare the administrators, in their fear, were trying to avoid. But then, I guess thought before action has never been a requirement of public education leadership, as sad and pathetic as it seems.
Yes, the school administrators are over reacting, and yes, the punishment does not fit the offense by a long shot. But what do we expect from public schools, nobody ever said they were run by intelligent people.
And that's to be accepted in a "civilized" society?
Fuck that.
People pay hard-earned tax dollars to cover the cost of public education, in the hope that their children might - MIGHT - learn enough to survive on their own, perhaps get a good job, make a few friends.
People do not pay hard-earned tax dollars to have their children bullied and threatened while teachers and administrators stand by and do nothing, unless the victims even hint at striking back, in which case the pop pseudopsychology kicks in, and suddenly they become crusading defenders. Of who and what, I'm not sure. Maybe of their jobs - "I prevented another Columbine, give me a raise!" - or some other demented reason.
Maybe parents of abused students (and that's exactly the term for it, abuse) should pull their kids out and send them to private schools. Maybe they should home-school. Maybe they should refuse to pay taxes until they start getting their money's worth. Maybe parents and kids should stage protests, sit-ins, demand the bums be thrown out, demand that some justice and sanity start being applied to the schools they (and you) pay for.
Maybe some parents should start taking an active interest in what their kids are doing outside of home. I wonder how many of the bullies' folks know how they treat other kids. I wonder if they even care.
A stupid statement like Sean's probably would have been ignored ten, even five years ago. For that matter, so would the bullying.
Perhaps if abused students and their parents took a stand and demanded a crackdown on the type of abuse that occurs in public schools, the backlashes wouldn't happen anymore.
Besides, why throw a Network Admin God at every network? For many networks, you don't need someone on the payroll that knows everything about everything. Because you can contract them when you need them. The full-time guy only needs to keep the system running most of the time. Right?
The network belongs to an ISP? I'd hope an ISP would at least have someone competent at running and troubleshooting a network.
You guys do have a Solaris admin for the Unix web servers, right? Or is the IT/sales guy handling that from one of the Windows boxes somehow? Just wondering how your ISP is handling what I assume are the only Unix boxen in the shop.
And if any immature kiddies try anything now that they know the ISP...go die somewhere.
Hey kip. Remember me? The guy from SlashNET you tried to convert to MS from Linux, and failed?
Although I'd immediately suspect you were a troll, I remember checking out your ISP (/whois, nslookup the result), and it looked legit. So...open source is communism? Microsoft is capitalism, which is good?
Sounds like Allchin calling the GPL "unAmerican". Ironic, considering I recall you work at a British ISP...sorry, my astroturf alarm is screaming right now.
Why the hell is it that every one of the linux zealots that read and post to slashdot BITCH AND MOAN about Microsoft products, claiming that they're the most worthless piece of shit software company on the planet?
Probably because a lot of us have watched Windows crap out for no discernible reason, under loads and uses that Linux and the *BSDs regularly chew up and spit out. I've watched both the cruddy 9x series, and the slightly more stable NT 4 collapse for bizarre reasons. Watching a DVD shouldn't cause a lockup. The OS shouldn't need a reboot every once in a while to "speed it back up." As for NT, watching someone nearly snap because an out-of-nowhere crash wiped out the video they'd been editing is *not* fun. I guess one could argue that NT 4 wasn't made for video editing...but then, why where these rather expensive machines purchased, and why did the company that sold them choose NT as the platform?
It's that inability to handle regular, everyday use without very careful shepherding that drove me - DROVE ME - to install Linux in the first place.
Incidents like this do not help. It's good that Microsoft mentioned in the initial patch summary that people who got a "this patch is not necessary" message needed to install it anyway - but then, that message shouldn't have popped up in the first place.
Too much crap wasting too much of my time. That's why I stay away from MS software whenever possible.
And he believes that, since he didn't steal the seeds, they ended up on his property through no actions of his own, he shouldn't have had to destroy part of his crop as Monsanto would have demanded. Actually, I suspect the company would have demanded he destroy his entire crop, and still pay them damages.
What happened was the wind-blown equivalent of a CueCat being mailed to people. They didn't ask for it, they didn't steal it, the company should lose rights to make demands of the people who received it.
The law, it seems, disagrees. Digital Convergence should have patented those CueCats; they could have gotten rich off the people who wrote Linux drivers for them, since they didn't abide by the "license" DC wanted to enforce on items they didn't ask for in many cases.
Doesn't a situation like that sound fundamentally wrong? Someone performs what, for all intents and purposes, should be a perfectly legal action - growing canola crops - loses everything because some outside plants contaminated his crop.
The "test" you speak of consisted of blasting crops with Roundup after noticing some of the plants around a power pole he blasted didn't die. The genetic tests didn't take place until much later, at which point Monsanto was the one aware that their particular resistant plant was in the field. From the testimony, which I downloaded and read after your post, the farmer knew some crops were resisting the herbicide, and that was it. There is no testimony or implication he stole the seed from anywhere, or knew without a doubt it was Monsanto's Roundup Ready seed. It ended up on his property through no actions of his own.
What happened to Mr. Schmeiser is far more wrong than his growing seeds that landed on his property.
The nightmare the "lefties" and "socialist freaks" have screamed and raved about has happened; a perfectly innocent person, who apparently didn't realize his crop was contaminated until the company came in and tested, has lost his life's work over something he had little to no control over - nature - because the law gave the company that kind of power and legal backing. Time to stop laughing; you can now have your life taken away from your through no wrong actions of your own. Unless these plants look significantly different, or the seeds friggin' grow or something, there is no way he could have known an outside plant had invaded his crop. But accidents and acts of God be damned, there's a patent to protect, and some license money to reclaim - and possibly get a little more money in the process (read the article, especially the part about Monsanto wanting all of his profits for the past few years).
That, to me, is a sign of a broken, unjust legal system, one where logic is shoved out of the way to protect not just every last cent (and more) of a company's revenue, but a series of legal institutions that are unable to deal with certain natural realities. The result has been disaster for a man that didn't steal anything from the company, except under a tenuous, legalistic definition of "theft", whereby you can apparently now be charged in unlawful posession of a plant species that the wind tossed on your lawn, and have to pay for it. You can say "but that's the law" all you want - in this case, and in many others, the law is wrong and needs to be fixed before someone else gets hurt.
So these "copy-protected" CDs won't work in CD/DVD-ROM drives...guess what I, and a few million others, use to listen to their CDs? Brilliant move, ensuring that a good-sized chunk of their customers won't be able to make use of their products anymore. Sounds like a sure-fire way...of driving people to Napster, or Gnutella now that Napster will soon only list RIAA-approved files.
I usually buy a CD, listen to it a couple of times, decide which tracks I like (maybe all, maybe some), and rip them to my mp3 directory for later random playback. Now, suddenly I'm told that I'm not allowed to listen to music that way? Fsck that. I'll just stick with artists that don't use the anti-consumer protection scheme the RIAA wishes to impose.
Slashdot Mirror
Except that there is a quirk in the US legislative process in that it is possible for laws which violate the US constitution to come into existance.
Hence, the reason I threw the world "constitutional" into that statement. If the Constitution is a document placing limits on the powers of government, then an unconstitutional law is one where the government breaches the rules laid out for it in some way. This should invalidate the law, making its application impossible. Therefore, you can be morally (though maybe not legally) justified in violating such a law - it may even be your moral duty in defense of the Constitution to fight and violate that law, otherwise the Constitution as a check on the power of government is rendered toothless.
I agree that this whole thing is stupid, but noone is granted a "right" to know the laws that they live under.
Uhhhh, what?
You have a responsibility to follow constitutional laws as passed...but you don't have a corresponding right to know what those laws are?
That would make ignorance of the law a valid excuse, which it is not.
A just legal system does not put people into a position where they can be punished for rules they don't have the right and opportunity to know about.
IIRC, isn't everything from government SPECIFICALLY excluded from copyright, as it's all done using the people's money? That applies to state governments, too, who write the building codes...
According to the article, the building organization attacking our hero wrote the law and just handed it to the state to pass.
Private groups writing laws and handing them to legislative bodies for rubber-stamping...where have we seen this take place before *coughDMCAcough*? Only this time it looks like the body wants to make a buck off the law people are expected to follow.
This also creates a situation where a powerful private group with certain interests can draft a law heavily in their favour, get it passed by friends in a legislature, and keep it hidden from public view in order to keep people from seeing what their tax dollars went toward passing. Secret bodies of law? Rules that benefit a privileged few while no one else can see they exist? Sounds like paranoid fantasies, but this story goes to show such bizarre thoughts aren't too far from the realm of possibility.
That's it. I'm going to hide under the bed. Call me when the nightmare's over.
Welcome to America(tm). Home of the Free(tm). We invented freedom, and we copyrighted it. You may license it for a small (enormous) fee. - mensch.
Thanks to the heavy private, closed, corporate influence in and of groups like WIPO, the WTO, and the drafting of documents like FTAA outside of public view, this is becoming a frightening possibility. Private groups controlling laws you're forced to obey, in effect taking the powers of the state with none of the checks or balances, and making a good amount of money from it, is the kind of nightmare depicted in Kosh-knows-how-many speculative fiction works. How fun to watch it unfold in front of our very eyes.
I wonder if the term "RICO" could be apply here...it certainly seems like a lot of these "non-profit" (HAH!) organizations are running rather lucrative rackets.
Consider it done.
This is from the "I-want-to-disturb-any-conference-I-want-to-withou t-any-governing-powers-looking-over-my-shoulder-wh ile-I-do-it" department.
f fect-700-million-people-without-letting-even-1-of- those-people-see-it-beforehand" department.
Or maybe the "protesting-the-drafting-of-a-document-meant-to-a
Nah. Couldn't be. Those protesters were just kiddies and pinkos. My democratically-elected government knows best. They'd never do anything not in my best interest. Never.
Federal law applies to interstate commerce. According to United States Constitution , article 1, section 8: "The Congress shall have power ... To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states."
Hmmm...I would think that would rip the guts out of any "choice-of-law" clause, unless (as I'm guessing here) there are no federal laws regarding online interstate commerce and licensing.
Ok, so here we have a case of a Washington company dealing with customers in Maryland. The WA company tries to place itself under WA jurisdiction. The MA people are under MA jurisdiction.
Since this appears to be a circumstance of interstate commerce, wouldn't it just be a helluva lot easier and more sensible to deal with this on the federal level? Who has jurisdiction over interstate commerce in the US? What laws, if any, would apply?
And how did you guys get into this mess in the first place?
...a 12-year-old New Jersey girl was threatened with three days of suspension...for using sign language on a bus?
The Associated Press story is reposted at Indymedia.
Also note the link to the school district's site in the comments...give 'em hell.
At this rate, blind people will be suspended for bringing white canes to school...
I have to wonder, in the midst of all this madness...what the flying fuck is going on around here? Who started handing out the stupid pills, and why are they so fucking popular with school administrators?
Nope. the justification is still there.
A $3500 "off-the-shelf" DVD-capable laptop is small comfort for those of us that purchased DVD drives and decoders long ago, and will probably never see drivers, binary or otherwise, released by the companies we purchased the equipment from.
Quite frankly, the DVD business is the only reason I still have Windows installed, and I keep watching the em8300 (DXR3/Hollywood+ card) driver releases, as well as Xine and OMS developments, for the day I can get that crud off my drive and I can happily watch DVDs on the platform of my choice.
I'm appreciative of good teachers and administrators as well; a few good teachers are the reason I didn't just give up on high school completely after a first couple of really, really crappy years. I don't think "appease[ing] the majority" requires letting their kids be thugs while the victims get tossed out for even thinking of fighting back.
Actually, I think a lot of parents would love to see a legitimate crackdown on bullying and in-school terrorism. Unfortunately, the policies that are put in place to prevent just this sort of incident from happening are forgotten, only to be remembered and applied with extreme prejudice when someone who isn't part of a larger group mouths the word "gun". What I wouldn't give to see the proper application of zero-tolerance policies with regard to physical and verbal abuse...then again, school populations would likely fall by as much as half, with all the explusions.
Maybe that would be a good thing; let the people who wish to learn remain, boot the idiots who refuse to be taught and let them learn on their own.
A million maybes...and no answers. Although, a good way to start might be a parent or victim standing up to say "Stop. This is wrong, and it needs to be changed, and I bet I can find one million people who agree with me."
Dreams...
What is the idea here? This kid's a typical fucked-up kid and he gets in trouble.
I think the idea is that the other fucked-up kids that have been harassing and abusing him didn't get in trouble. The lack of an actual investigation in favour of a knee-jerk expulsion probably didn't help.
Quite frankly, if Sean was "fucked-up", as you describe him, that final rejection would have probably triggered the kind of shooting nightmare the administrators, in their fear, were trying to avoid. But then, I guess thought before action has never been a requirement of public education leadership, as sad and pathetic as it seems.
Yes, the school administrators are over reacting, and yes, the punishment does not fit the offense by a long shot. But what do we expect from public schools, nobody ever said they were run by intelligent people.
And that's to be accepted in a "civilized" society?
Fuck that.
People pay hard-earned tax dollars to cover the cost of public education, in the hope that their children might - MIGHT - learn enough to survive on their own, perhaps get a good job, make a few friends.
People do not pay hard-earned tax dollars to have their children bullied and threatened while teachers and administrators stand by and do nothing, unless the victims even hint at striking back, in which case the pop pseudopsychology kicks in, and suddenly they become crusading defenders. Of who and what, I'm not sure. Maybe of their jobs - "I prevented another Columbine, give me a raise!" - or some other demented reason.
Maybe parents of abused students (and that's exactly the term for it, abuse) should pull their kids out and send them to private schools. Maybe they should home-school. Maybe they should refuse to pay taxes until they start getting their money's worth. Maybe parents and kids should stage protests, sit-ins, demand the bums be thrown out, demand that some justice and sanity start being applied to the schools they (and you) pay for.
Maybe some parents should start taking an active interest in what their kids are doing outside of home. I wonder how many of the bullies' folks know how they treat other kids. I wonder if they even care.
A stupid statement like Sean's probably would have been ignored ten, even five years ago. For that matter, so would the bullying.
Perhaps if abused students and their parents took a stand and demanded a crackdown on the type of abuse that occurs in public schools, the backlashes wouldn't happen anymore.
end rant.
Was this not their first clue that SOMETHING was awry? Perhaps a little pre-service exam would be usefull...
[ ] Check this box if you are an idiot, please.
Hey, if it's not required to vote in presidential elections...
US Army: "We have the latest digital equipment, remote tracking, computerized targeting, and enough ammo to wipe your ass out!"
Geek with a HERF gun: "Buh-bye."
Get over it son, you'll live longer without all that angst.
I just don't take well to proseltyzing, that's all.
Besides, why throw a Network Admin God at every network? For many networks, you don't need someone on the payroll that knows everything about everything. Because you can contract them when you need them. The full-time guy only needs to keep the system running most of the time. Right?
The network belongs to an ISP? I'd hope an ISP would at least have someone competent at running and troubleshooting a network.
Hi kip. Me again.
You did say your ISP is an all-Windows shop, oui?
You guys do have a Solaris admin for the Unix web servers, right? Or is the IT/sales guy handling that from one of the Windows boxes somehow? Just wondering how your ISP is handling what I assume are the only Unix boxen in the shop.
And if any immature kiddies try anything now that they know the ISP...go die somewhere.
Hey kip. Remember me? The guy from SlashNET you tried to convert to MS from Linux, and failed?
Although I'd immediately suspect you were a troll, I remember checking out your ISP (/whois, nslookup the result), and it looked legit. So...open source is communism? Microsoft is capitalism, which is good?
Sounds like Allchin calling the GPL "unAmerican". Ironic, considering I recall you work at a British ISP...sorry, my astroturf alarm is screaming right now.
Why the hell is it that every one of the linux zealots that read and post to slashdot BITCH AND MOAN about Microsoft products, claiming that they're the most worthless piece of shit software company on the planet?
Probably because a lot of us have watched Windows crap out for no discernible reason, under loads and uses that Linux and the *BSDs regularly chew up and spit out. I've watched both the cruddy 9x series, and the slightly more stable NT 4 collapse for bizarre reasons. Watching a DVD shouldn't cause a lockup. The OS shouldn't need a reboot every once in a while to "speed it back up." As for NT, watching someone nearly snap because an out-of-nowhere crash wiped out the video they'd been editing is *not* fun. I guess one could argue that NT 4 wasn't made for video editing...but then, why where these rather expensive machines purchased, and why did the company that sold them choose NT as the platform?
It's that inability to handle regular, everyday use without very careful shepherding that drove me - DROVE ME - to install Linux in the first place.
Incidents like this do not help. It's good that Microsoft mentioned in the initial patch summary that people who got a "this patch is not necessary" message needed to install it anyway - but then, that message shouldn't have popped up in the first place.
Too much crap wasting too much of my time. That's why I stay away from MS software whenever possible.
And he believes that, since he didn't steal the seeds, they ended up on his property through no actions of his own, he shouldn't have had to destroy part of his crop as Monsanto would have demanded. Actually, I suspect the company would have demanded he destroy his entire crop, and still pay them damages.
What happened was the wind-blown equivalent of a CueCat being mailed to people. They didn't ask for it, they didn't steal it, the company should lose rights to make demands of the people who received it.
The law, it seems, disagrees. Digital Convergence should have patented those CueCats; they could have gotten rich off the people who wrote Linux drivers for them, since they didn't abide by the "license" DC wanted to enforce on items they didn't ask for in many cases.
Doesn't a situation like that sound fundamentally wrong? Someone performs what, for all intents and purposes, should be a perfectly legal action - growing canola crops - loses everything because some outside plants contaminated his crop.
The "test" you speak of consisted of blasting crops with Roundup after noticing some of the plants around a power pole he blasted didn't die. The genetic tests didn't take place until much later, at which point Monsanto was the one aware that their particular resistant plant was in the field. From the testimony, which I downloaded and read after your post, the farmer knew some crops were resisting the herbicide, and that was it. There is no testimony or implication he stole the seed from anywhere, or knew without a doubt it was Monsanto's Roundup Ready seed. It ended up on his property through no actions of his own.
What happened to Mr. Schmeiser is far more wrong than his growing seeds that landed on his property.
"or the seeds friggin' grow or something"
that should be "glow".
The nightmare the "lefties" and "socialist freaks" have screamed and raved about has happened; a perfectly innocent person, who apparently didn't realize his crop was contaminated until the company came in and tested, has lost his life's work over something he had little to no control over - nature - because the law gave the company that kind of power and legal backing. Time to stop laughing; you can now have your life taken away from your through no wrong actions of your own. Unless these plants look significantly different, or the seeds friggin' grow or something, there is no way he could have known an outside plant had invaded his crop. But accidents and acts of God be damned, there's a patent to protect, and some license money to reclaim - and possibly get a little more money in the process (read the article, especially the part about Monsanto wanting all of his profits for the past few years).
That, to me, is a sign of a broken, unjust legal system, one where logic is shoved out of the way to protect not just every last cent (and more) of a company's revenue, but a series of legal institutions that are unable to deal with certain natural realities. The result has been disaster for a man that didn't steal anything from the company, except under a tenuous, legalistic definition of "theft", whereby you can apparently now be charged in unlawful posession of a plant species that the wind tossed on your lawn, and have to pay for it. You can say "but that's the law" all you want - in this case, and in many others, the law is wrong and needs to be fixed before someone else gets hurt.
My own, personal, heartfelt message to the empire.
So these "copy-protected" CDs won't work in CD/DVD-ROM drives...guess what I, and a few million others, use to listen to their CDs? Brilliant move, ensuring that a good-sized chunk of their customers won't be able to make use of their products anymore. Sounds like a sure-fire way...of driving people to Napster, or Gnutella now that Napster will soon only list RIAA-approved files.
I usually buy a CD, listen to it a couple of times, decide which tracks I like (maybe all, maybe some), and rip them to my mp3 directory for later random playback. Now, suddenly I'm told that I'm not allowed to listen to music that way? Fsck that. I'll just stick with artists that don't use the anti-consumer protection scheme the RIAA wishes to impose.