That's a valid concern -- but as I said, I don't approve of the DMCA (and likely would also disapprove of any stronger successors to it).
The ability of a company to hire scientists and engineers to develop DRM certainly does not entail legal defenses against bypassing DRM or a legal mandate of DRM. Companies have had a long and rich tradition of DRM for decades, and somehow the industry has managed to keep alive without the DMCA.
I rather *liked* the way things were being run before the DMCA came along, and I think it'd be rather nice to revert to that state of affairs.
And there are lots of other good reasons to support DRM but not the DMCA and related legislation. DRM can be universalized. With the DMCA, you stop everyone in the US. Then some people in Italy do it. And the US throws a tantrum, and some people get arrested for doing something that may be technically legal in Italy. Then there's a round of international agreements, and the whole thing devolves to hacks being done in third world nations where DMCA-like laws cannot be enforced. Big, expensive political mess involving intrusive investigations, international bullying, and all manner of nastiness.
Whereas if you make the only out for a company to be a *technical* remedy, you get lots of research and technical advances being made which can have good secondary applications to the consumer.
Actually, the mainstream media has gotten in the habit of snagging feelings about things off major tech forums like Slashdot.
Code Red got *tons* of coverage, despite it not being all that interesting from a technical standpoint. Joe Public knew about it, even if he didn't know what it was (and didn't know that MS's products were the only ones at fault).
IMHO, the DUL is a complete PITA. The requiring that no one run a mail server of their own...it's just stupid, and breaks architecture.
White lists would be *far* more intelligent. They be almost perfectly effective (perhaps worms could spam, until whatever hole they were exploiting is closed, but that's it).
White lists are inevitable, barring some other massive change. Let's move to them, and stop having to deal with all these stupid half-assed anti-spam measures that make legitimate users miserable.
You know, the DMCA and DRM are two quite different beasts, and you don't have to agree with one to agree to the other.
I have severe issues with the current incarnation of the DMCA. It's broken, it can go after that most sancrosanct of creatures, the software engineer, and it gives ridiculously strong legal protections. It's also way to abusable for things that it wasn't intended to cover, like MS using it to keep (non content-related) protocols closed. Having the government, which I pay money to, enforce laws that prevent me from writing software is objectionable to me.
OTOH, I think that DRM is a great idea. Fun, even. The satellite TV wars are, I think, one of the neatest things going. The company engineers manage to make it annoying enough that your average Joe is willing to just pay for his TV. Hackers are having a fun time competing with the engineers. It's a technical war at its finest. If the company engineers eventually come out on top, more power to them. They fought the good fight and won. Just as I support not artifically restricting the rights of someone to write copy protection bypassing software, I support the right of the TV engineers to write whatever protection software they want. This has always been the case, ranging from the days of colored watermarks to screw up Xeroxing to now.
But, you might think, digital copy protection is harder to get by than analog copy protection? Tough. It's also much easier to *copy* digital information en masse than it is to Xerox something a thousand times.
I'd like the DMCA gone, but that doesn't mean that DRM should go away.
The FSF doesn't have the power to do anything with your license.
Ah. We'll see.
The GPL just says "version X.x of the GPL OR any later version.
Yes, that's precisely what I'm objecting to.
In other words, the USER GETS TO CHOOSE which one to follow, according to the FSF.
Which is completely meaningless, because anyone that gets their hands on your code can then use the revision if they want. You have zero guarantees that, say, Red Hat or SuSE won't be granted rights to use the source without reopening it. Don't laugh -- this has been brought up as possible material for the GPLv3, and is why Linus refuses to grant revision ability to the FSF.
That's better, as it gives the user more FREEDOM.
Meaningless semantics. It has a legal, practical impact that we both recognize and that I and many others have an issue with. Saying that this is "better" because it's a "freedom" issue is simply meaningless. Should I be allowed to shoot you because it's a "freedom" issue?
Thus you're concerns and those of Linus are completely unwarranted on this matter.
Oh. Thanks for straightening Torvalds and me out.
The end-user being able to choose which version of the GPL gives the end user more FREEDOM.
As stated above, semantic arguments are meaningless for our situation.
Also, note, that the copyright author not the GPL grants the user the right to choose which version of the GPL to use.
True. Unfortunately, a very rarely exercised option. Torvalds does it, and a number of other people, but not enough to put a firm clamp on the FSF running amok. On the up side, just as the GPL virally spreads through code, the version-restricted GPL virally spreads through the regular GPL, so I'm fairly comfortable that this is not a problem. Eventually everyone will be forced into a single version of the license.
Though I'd argue it should, since this gives the user more freedom.
Okay, I could point out that the GPL is designed to allow the developer freedom, and the BSD license the user freedom, and by your logic the BSD license would be superior, but it's a semantic argument, as I said above. "More freedom"...who cares? The practical impact is what matters.
As I also said, I think that you should give co-ownership to any organization which stands up for the freedoms you want to protect, including the FSF, OSI, EFF, etc. That way, there is no single point of failure.
That's idiotic. Most people using the GPL specifically use it because they do *not* want a BSD-style license. Giving co-ownership does nothing but add another point of failure (where the thing could be relicensed by a single corrupt party to be closed source). It does *not* add additional robustness to your license -- it significantly decreases it.
Why are people coming up with all these irrelevant analogies?
This is from a guy who's.sig is "To ruin the net to save Disney is the equivalent of burning down the library of Alexandria to save monastic scribes"?:-)
The other companies in question chose to allow company X to integrate its code with theirs.
Quite likely. However, you have no way of knowing what this agreement included. It could be an informal verbal agreement, where he gets no particular legal rights. It could be a written one prohibiting redistribution of their own source as part of the agreement, which means that if he tries to redistribute the source, the license they grant him becomes invalid. This is quite common.
Its code happened to be integrated with GPL'ed code, which means that anything it MUST be released under the GPL, as MUST anything else it integrates with (ref. to GPL). The other companies had the obligation to make sure that company X didn't have any GPL'ed code. They didn't do that. THEIR FAULT. Now they pay the price. They are OBLIGATED to distribute their code under the GPL because they "knew or SHOULD HAVE KNOWN that the code they were merging with had GPL'ed code in it". In other words, the burden is on them.
This is simply stupid. If I produce a license, say that's something like this, the only person who gets screwed over is the person licensing it, if he intends to merge with GPLed code. There's no implied license, as you seem to feel is the case. The merging person simply does not have the ability to produce a derivative work an apply both the license he was granted at the same time, because doing so would violate clauses of one or the other licenses.
Laugh now. Then wait until some ambulance-chaser files suit against the US government for a school shooting caused by the America's Army video game.:-(
if you take GPL'd code and make somethin else, the finished product, even if it no longer does the same thing it did before, must be gpl'd
I realize that.
My question (I'll restate and perhaps be clearer):
A = The guy that wrote the original GPL work. B = The guy that illegally grabbed the GPL stuff, then merged it with propriatary stuff, then illegally tried to GPL someone else's code.
I am, for the moment, ignoring the fact that B is already in hot water for distributing a derivative work containing GPLed code under a non-GPL license. We all agree that B is already in hot water for doing that.
My question relates to the second bit: B has made an invalid license in trying to GPL the derivative code he made. It contains non-GPLed code that he does not own which he does not have the right to GPL, thus the derivative project cannot be GPLed as a whole. He attempted to GPL the derivative work as a whole. This license is necessarily *invalid*.
I believe that the derivative work contains three sections of code. The propriatary code from the third party, the GPL code from A, and some additions from B.
Now, B has made this invalid licensing under the GPL of his derivative work as a whole. Since this is invalid with respect to the propriatary extensions, my question is whether his license is still in place (and binds him) as regards his *own* contributions to the derivative work, or whether the entire thing simply goes out the window.
If B makes three licenses that say:
"I am licensing A's contribution under the GPL", that's valid "I am licensing B's contribution under the GPL" this is valid, as he's the copyright holder "I am licensing third party propriatary bits under the GPL", this is not valid.
However, the first two licenses still hold (though only the second one is important).
This guy made a *single* license that applies to the work as a whole. Are his own contributions to the derived work now GPLed or not?
This sounds cool, but if you were working at a research lab, weren't you under NDA? How can you release information about this w/o IBM getting on your ass about it?
Switching distros isn't going to help much. A distro is a distro is a distro. The problem is that X has a larger constant overhead than GUIs of the day did -- yank X off the machine and it'll be a decent server.
Hmm...interesting. Last time I used it it was like 3 years ago.
Also, IIRC it was written (or this could be a very similar utility, hard to remember...could be what I'm confusing it with) by the author of one of the Mac's few malicious viruses. As a sort of atonement, he wrote a few pieces of very nice software, which he then released for free. Kind of cool.
Of course, this was years and years ago, and VT appears to be $20, so...
That being said, I agree with the endorsement. Once you've experienced it, using a system without multiple viewports is incredibly painful. It's a tremendously attractive feature. I cannot imagine how people get by on vanilla Windows (BTW, there's a fairly good page for Windows called JS Pager).
Well, he sure as hell isn't going to read it after this.
Ten thousand emails reading "ThanX d00d, fight the power! I love j00 guys cuz j00 don't care about profits or nothing, just the little guy! Information should be free!"
I certainly support freedom. Of course, that freedom includes the freedom of people to add DRM to the computer systems they sell, and the freedom of people to choose whether to buy or not buy it.
The Founding Fathers didn't give a rat's ass about whether you can get a weekly free beer at a bar. Their freedom of speech was to ensure that political speech wouldn't be silenced.
There are the starry-eyed idealists, who think that all information must be free. Sounds cute, but also sounds like the intellectuals promoting (and promising) communism, the five hour workday, global cooperation after the Leage of Nations was formed...
There are the teen thieves (you sorts, don't give me flack for using this term -- it has no legal meaning, and is only linked to the common usage of the word "theft", not the legal term). They want to be able to copy whatever they want to because they expect that somehow their Eminem will be made for them for free.
There are the artists and proponents of such (a far smaller group than you might think). They see sharing of music as a useful distribution channel for demos and teasers, and possibly even for eventual sales, if a tip-based market *turns out to be viable*, but are concerned that they might not have any stable source of income under such a scenerio.
There are the record publisher types, who combat copyright infringement wherever they find it, in the fear of losing control and profits.
There are the waverers (big group) who agree with most groups right after a rousing article from one side, but don't really feel "right" about any of the solutions so far.
There are the ulta-libertarians, who have decided that file sharing constitutes a free speech issue, and are battling based on constitutional grounds.
There are the pragmatists (kind of like most of the judges so far), that ignore the ideology or individual impacs, and have only interest in the long term impact of DRM or a lack thereof and the costs to the country/world/society.
There are the people who feel that creators have a moral right to whatever they create -- that they should *never* lose control over it. Courtney Love, I believe, said something along these lines.
There are the engineer types, who's main objection is having a really unpleasant (from the user perspective, in privacy or reliability or price) DRM system forced upon the user.
There are the hacker types, who are worried that DRM will keep them from mucking around with the guts of their systems.
All of these groups are quite distinct. There are sub-categories, and more groups I haven't listed. None of these agree particularly well with others. Apple doesn't fit in *any* of these factions above, though there's probably a fair number of their customers that fall into the "artist" group.
Anyway, to sum up -- there aren't two sides in this. There are a lot of major concerns. Apple has no interest in "taking sides" against anyone.
Apple does hardware. They really don't want it mucked up with a lot of poorly-done DRM crap, so they partly have an engineer perspective. They're worried about upsetting their users, both the "teen thief" and the "artists" variety. They probably also don't want to be at the recieving end of a lawsuit if their DRM is bypassable. Apple's already built DRM into their OS once (see the archaic and long-obsolete Copy Protect flag), and firmly decided that it was ineffective, and a complete pain in the ass.
Because an artist, some marketing people, some truck drivers, some teen salespeople, and some people that run a CD press are the ones getting shafted instead of you?
The difference is that countries get pissed off (*cough* Australia legalizing bypassing region code restrictions, *cough* Canada and satellite TV) about this sort of stuff and turn a blind eye to bypassing.
You then have a bunch of types that would never blow time trying to bypass copy protection running out and working on doing so. Before it was just the Linux folks. Now it's the Mac folks.:-)
I hope those DRM coders aren't making any mistakes in any of their code or design, or it's gonna get exploited to hell.
Yeah, I've noticed that. Seems like all the job reqs these days include Perl, from soft. dev to sysadmining to computer engineering. Now, I know Perl (well, enough of a subset to comfortably code in), but I hate to think of the masses of unmaintainable code being written.
Slashdot Mirror
That's a valid concern -- but as I said, I don't approve of the DMCA (and likely would also disapprove of any stronger successors to it).
The ability of a company to hire scientists and engineers to develop DRM certainly does not entail legal defenses against bypassing DRM or a legal mandate of DRM. Companies have had a long and rich tradition of DRM for decades, and somehow the industry has managed to keep alive without the DMCA.
I rather *liked* the way things were being run before the DMCA came along, and I think it'd be rather nice to revert to that state of affairs.
And there are lots of other good reasons to support DRM but not the DMCA and related legislation. DRM can be universalized. With the DMCA, you stop everyone in the US. Then some people in Italy do it. And the US throws a tantrum, and some people get arrested for doing something that may be technically legal in Italy. Then there's a round of international agreements, and the whole thing devolves to hacks being done in third world nations where DMCA-like laws cannot be enforced. Big, expensive political mess involving intrusive investigations, international bullying, and all manner of nastiness.
Whereas if you make the only out for a company to be a *technical* remedy, you get lots of research and technical advances being made which can have good secondary applications to the consumer.
Actually, the mainstream media has gotten in the habit of snagging feelings about things off major tech forums like Slashdot.
Code Red got *tons* of coverage, despite it not being all that interesting from a technical standpoint. Joe Public knew about it, even if he didn't know what it was (and didn't know that MS's products were the only ones at fault).
Ah, yes. Yahoo Greeting Cards. Source Of All Spam. And the worst thing is that people are so well-meaning too.
:-(
The whole point of sites that ask you to "recommend a friend" is to see just how many email addresses you can yank from a single newbie.
IMHO, the DUL is a complete PITA. The requiring that no one run a mail server of their own...it's just stupid, and breaks architecture.
White lists would be *far* more intelligent. They be almost perfectly effective (perhaps worms could spam, until whatever hole they were exploiting is closed, but that's it).
White lists are inevitable, barring some other massive change. Let's move to them, and stop having to deal with all these stupid half-assed anti-spam measures that make legitimate users miserable.
You know, the DMCA and DRM are two quite different beasts, and you don't have to agree with one to agree to the other.
I have severe issues with the current incarnation of the DMCA. It's broken, it can go after that most sancrosanct of creatures, the software engineer, and it gives ridiculously strong legal protections. It's also way to abusable for things that it wasn't intended to cover, like MS using it to keep (non content-related) protocols closed. Having the government, which I pay money to, enforce laws that prevent me from writing software is objectionable to me.
OTOH, I think that DRM is a great idea. Fun, even. The satellite TV wars are, I think, one of the neatest things going. The company engineers manage to make it annoying enough that your average Joe is willing to just pay for his TV. Hackers are having a fun time competing with the engineers. It's a technical war at its finest. If the company engineers eventually come out on top, more power to them. They fought the good fight and won. Just as I support not artifically restricting the rights of someone to write copy protection bypassing software, I support the right of the TV engineers to write whatever protection software they want. This has always been the case, ranging from the days of colored watermarks to screw up Xeroxing to now.
But, you might think, digital copy protection is harder to get by than analog copy protection? Tough. It's also much easier to *copy* digital information en masse than it is to Xerox something a thousand times.
I'd like the DMCA gone, but that doesn't mean that DRM should go away.
WRONG
Do tell.
The FSF doesn't have the power to do anything with your license.
Ah. We'll see.
The GPL just says "version X.x of the GPL OR any later version.
Yes, that's precisely what I'm objecting to.
In other words, the USER GETS TO CHOOSE which one to follow, according to the FSF.
Which is completely meaningless, because anyone that gets their hands on your code can then use the revision if they want. You have zero guarantees that, say, Red Hat or SuSE won't be granted rights to use the source without reopening it. Don't laugh -- this has been brought up as possible material for the GPLv3, and is why Linus refuses to grant revision ability to the FSF.
That's better, as it gives the user more FREEDOM.
Meaningless semantics. It has a legal, practical impact that we both recognize and that I and many others have an issue with. Saying that this is "better" because it's a "freedom" issue is simply meaningless. Should I be allowed to shoot you because it's a "freedom" issue?
Thus you're concerns and those of Linus are completely unwarranted on this matter.
Oh. Thanks for straightening Torvalds and me out.
The end-user being able to choose which version of the GPL gives the end user more FREEDOM.
As stated above, semantic arguments are meaningless for our situation.
Also, note, that the copyright author not the GPL grants the user the right to choose which version of the GPL to use.
True. Unfortunately, a very rarely exercised option. Torvalds does it, and a number of other people, but not enough to put a firm clamp on the FSF running amok. On the up side, just as the GPL virally spreads through code, the version-restricted GPL virally spreads through the regular GPL, so I'm fairly comfortable that this is not a problem. Eventually everyone will be forced into a single version of the license.
Though I'd argue it should, since this gives the user more freedom.
Okay, I could point out that the GPL is designed to allow the developer freedom, and the BSD license the user freedom, and by your logic the BSD license would be superior, but it's a semantic argument, as I said above. "More freedom"...who cares? The practical impact is what matters.
As I also said, I think that you should give co-ownership to any organization which stands up for the freedoms you want to protect, including the FSF, OSI, EFF, etc. That way, there is no single point of failure.
That's idiotic. Most people using the GPL specifically use it because they do *not* want a BSD-style license. Giving co-ownership does nothing but add another point of failure (where the thing could be relicensed by a single corrupt party to be closed source). It does *not* add additional robustness to your license -- it significantly decreases it.
Why are people coming up with all these irrelevant analogies?
.sig is "To ruin the net to save Disney is the equivalent of burning down the library of Alexandria to save monastic scribes"? :-)
This is from a guy who's
The other companies in question chose to allow company X to integrate its code with theirs.
Quite likely. However, you have no way of knowing what this agreement included. It could be an informal verbal agreement, where he gets no particular legal rights. It could be a written one prohibiting redistribution of their own source as part of the agreement, which means that if he tries to redistribute the source, the license they grant him becomes invalid. This is quite common.
Its code happened to be integrated with GPL'ed code, which means that anything it MUST be released under the GPL, as MUST anything else it integrates with (ref. to GPL). The other companies had the obligation to make sure that company X didn't have any GPL'ed code. They didn't do that. THEIR FAULT. Now they pay the price. They are OBLIGATED to distribute their code under the GPL because they "knew or SHOULD HAVE KNOWN that the code they were merging with had GPL'ed code in it". In other words, the burden is on them.
This is simply stupid. If I produce a license, say that's something like this, the only person who gets screwed over is the person licensing it, if he intends to merge with GPLed code. There's no implied license, as you seem to feel is the case. The merging person simply does not have the ability to produce a derivative work an apply both the license he was granted at the same time, because doing so would violate clauses of one or the other licenses.
Laugh now. Then wait until some ambulance-chaser files suit against the US government for a school shooting caused by the America's Army video game. :-(
That wasn't really what I was asking.
:
if you take GPL'd code and make somethin else, the finished product, even if it no longer does the same thing it did before, must be gpl'd
I realize that.
My question (I'll restate and perhaps be clearer)
A = The guy that wrote the original GPL work.
B = The guy that illegally grabbed the GPL stuff, then merged it with propriatary stuff, then illegally tried to GPL someone else's code.
I am, for the moment, ignoring the fact that B is already in hot water for distributing a derivative work containing GPLed code under a non-GPL license. We all agree that B is already in hot water for doing that.
My question relates to the second bit: B has made an invalid license in trying to GPL the derivative code he made. It contains non-GPLed code that he does not own which he does not have the right to GPL, thus the derivative project cannot be GPLed as a whole. He attempted to GPL the derivative work as a whole. This license is necessarily *invalid*.
I believe that the derivative work contains three sections of code. The propriatary code from the third party, the GPL code from A, and some additions from B.
Now, B has made this invalid licensing under the GPL of his derivative work as a whole. Since this is invalid with respect to the propriatary extensions, my question is whether his license is still in place (and binds him) as regards his *own* contributions to the derivative work, or whether the entire thing simply goes out the window.
If B makes three licenses that say:
"I am licensing A's contribution under the GPL", that's valid
"I am licensing B's contribution under the GPL" this is valid, as he's the copyright holder
"I am licensing third party propriatary bits under the GPL", this is not valid.
However, the first two licenses still hold (though only the second one is important).
This guy made a *single* license that applies to the work as a whole. Are his own contributions to the derived work now GPLed or not?
You have *upwards of six meetings a day* and also program full time?
Where the *hell* do you work, and why do you have that many?
I'd go mad.
Wait a minute. Your idea of an entry level Palm isn't even a Palm (which *do* go down to $100)?
Hell, you'd have to get an m515 to get up to even $350 (acc. to Palm's online store).
This sounds cool, but if you were working at a research lab, weren't you under NDA? How can you release information about this w/o IBM getting on your ass about it?
Switching distros isn't going to help much. A distro is a distro is a distro. The problem is that X has a larger constant overhead than GUIs of the day did -- yank X off the machine and it'll be a decent server.
Where did you get the effect for "lid closing"?
Hmm...interesting. Last time I used it it was like 3 years ago.
Also, IIRC it was written (or this could be a very similar utility, hard to remember...could be what I'm confusing it with) by the author of one of the Mac's few malicious viruses. As a sort of atonement, he wrote a few pieces of very nice software, which he then released for free. Kind of cool.
Of course, this was years and years ago, and VT appears to be $20, so...
That being said, I agree with the endorsement. Once you've experienced it, using a system without multiple viewports is incredibly painful. It's a tremendously attractive feature. I cannot imagine how people get by on vanilla Windows (BTW, there's a fairly good page for Windows called JS Pager).
Well, he sure as hell isn't going to read it after this.
Ten thousand emails reading "ThanX d00d, fight the power! I love j00 guys cuz j00 don't care about profits or nothing, just the little guy! Information should be free!"
No, only at *good* colleges. People at shitty colleges learn VB and Visual Studio.
I think you're thinking of "theft".
AFAIK, "steal" has no legal meaning.
A good chunk of Mac users *are* artists...
I certainly support freedom. Of course, that freedom includes the freedom of people to add DRM to the computer systems they sell, and the freedom of people to choose whether to buy or not buy it.
The Founding Fathers didn't give a rat's ass about whether you can get a weekly free beer at a bar. Their freedom of speech was to ensure that political speech wouldn't be silenced.
This is not a "two sides" issue.
There are the starry-eyed idealists, who think that all information must be free. Sounds cute, but also sounds like the intellectuals promoting (and promising) communism, the five hour workday, global cooperation after the Leage of Nations was formed...
There are the teen thieves (you sorts, don't give me flack for using this term -- it has no legal meaning, and is only linked to the common usage of the word "theft", not the legal term). They want to be able to copy whatever they want to because they expect that somehow their Eminem will be made for them for free.
There are the artists and proponents of such (a far smaller group than you might think). They see sharing of music as a useful distribution channel for demos and teasers, and possibly even for eventual sales, if a tip-based market *turns out to be viable*, but are concerned that they might not have any stable source of income under such a scenerio.
There are the record publisher types, who combat copyright infringement wherever they find it, in the fear of losing control and profits.
There are the waverers (big group) who agree with most groups right after a rousing article from one side, but don't really feel "right" about any of the solutions so far.
There are the ulta-libertarians, who have decided that file sharing constitutes a free speech issue, and are battling based on constitutional grounds.
There are the pragmatists (kind of like most of the judges so far), that ignore the ideology or individual impacs, and have only interest in the long term impact of DRM or a lack thereof and the costs to the country/world/society.
There are the people who feel that creators have a moral right to whatever they create -- that they should *never* lose control over it. Courtney Love, I believe, said something along these lines.
There are the engineer types, who's main objection is having a really unpleasant (from the user perspective, in privacy or reliability or price) DRM system forced upon the user.
There are the hacker types, who are worried that DRM will keep them from mucking around with the guts of their systems.
All of these groups are quite distinct. There are sub-categories, and more groups I haven't listed. None of these agree particularly well with others. Apple doesn't fit in *any* of these factions above, though there's probably a fair number of their customers that fall into the "artist" group.
Anyway, to sum up -- there aren't two sides in this. There are a lot of major concerns. Apple has no interest in "taking sides" against anyone.
Apple does hardware. They really don't want it mucked up with a lot of poorly-done DRM crap, so they partly have an engineer perspective. They're worried about upsetting their users, both the "teen thief" and the "artists" variety. They probably also don't want to be at the recieving end of a lawsuit if their DRM is bypassable. Apple's already built DRM into their OS once (see the archaic and long-obsolete Copy Protect flag), and firmly decided that it was ineffective, and a complete pain in the ass.
Dear God, a moderate, reasonable, sensible *and* insightful comment related to DRM? And on Slashdot? What is the world coming to?
not quite breaking into someone's house
Because an artist, some marketing people, some truck drivers, some teen salespeople, and some people that run a CD press are the ones getting shafted instead of you?
Yup.
:-)
The difference is that countries get pissed off (*cough* Australia legalizing bypassing region code restrictions, *cough* Canada and satellite TV) about this sort of stuff and turn a blind eye to bypassing.
You then have a bunch of types that would never blow time trying to bypass copy protection running out and working on doing so. Before it was just the Linux folks. Now it's the Mac folks.
I hope those DRM coders aren't making any mistakes in any of their code or design, or it's gonna get exploited to hell.
Yeah, I've noticed that. Seems like all the job reqs these days include Perl, from soft. dev to sysadmining to computer engineering. Now, I know Perl (well, enough of a subset to comfortably code in), but I hate to think of the masses of unmaintainable code being written.