I've heard there is pending legislation on a new version of the DMCA - this one would make it a violation to possess any software that could be used to remove copyright protection, or enable copying of protected material - punishable by 10 years in prison for the first offense and 20 years for the second offense - no I'm not waxing paranoid on you guys as obviously this is unworkable and would essentially outlaw programming tools such as debuggers - obviously it wouldn't fly, but after a cursory Google I've been unsuccessful in finding out the details - this was heard on a radio program, and is not a rumor - does anyone have any details or a link, I'm curious as to the gory details.

OMG, I might have to shitcan Nero!

SiGiNT

omg,

are you serious? can that be practically "formulated"??? everybody owning a debugger gets to prison? haha shit why is it so often that obviously the "stupid" people are making the laws argh

does anyone know more / have a link ?

i am shocked and googling ...

0xf001

thanks God im not an american citizen , here is another great american export stuff:

http://shelleytherepublican.com/2006/04/linux-european-threat-to-our-computers.html

bart: i can not believe it!

if 1 single person has an opinion like this .... something .... it would be quite bad, and also i would not believe it. now tell me there is more than 1 person believing this shit ....

i cant tell for 100% if it's true or not, but look at other posts on this blog (eg. top 10 american enemies, liberal children etc.) so it might be real

OH! HORSESHIT!

I count my self as a conservative republican, and that garbage article - does not represent - the thinking of conservatives - republicans by definition are free enterprise advocates, and quite frankly SCO's lock onthe UNIX environment was far more draconian than Bill Gate's monopolizing bullshit - any kind of competition including free is good - it only spurs the companies that want to sell a GUI for linux, or their cadillac version, to produce better products, the comments in that article are similar to the thinking of Tim McVeigh, and are a "live in a hole with all the guns you can buy" mentality - strictly looney fringe crap.

SiGiNT

OK!

I found an article on the proposed legislation -

http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-6064016.html ("http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-6064016.html")

Howdy,

Those things are already in the DMCA.

Woodmann

The 24-page bill is a far-reaching medley of different proposals cobbled together. One would, for instance, create a new federal crime of just trying to commit copyright infringement. Such willful attempts at piracy, even if they fail, could be punished by up to 10 years in prison.



Taking this to the extreme, using a hex editor to change a label, or trying to guess at a serial - could land you in jail, even though I'm a republican I wouldn't put anything past the Bush administration - they seem to be hell bent on burning the bill of rights, sad thing is I voted for him twice, both times lesser of 2 evils, could be I was wrong.

SiGiNT

About this Tristan:
after reading this, i guess he really believes what he has written in this blog. however, i only see a flame-article without proving or explaining any of his arguments. That's a thing that can everyone do. at the end it was funny to read

At best this guy can only be called a computer idiot - linux was designed to circumvent the DMCA? uhhhh, it's been around a lot longer than the DMCA, and DVD's - BSA has legal authority - nope none! if they show up on your doorstep you can simply tell them to go away, and they have to - so far the only companies that have paid fines to the BSA coughed up self-audit information and settled out of court. Osama uses linux because it can generate money for guns??, who in the hell ever inspected Osama's laptop? - he also implies that Windows is more secure than linux, I don't think so - this guy is nutz!

SiGiNT

In a perfect computer world Nico would be out of a job, along with Alexy.

Same here. In fact, I'm in one of the few countries where reversing and cracking is a popular hobby, and the government does not care at all about these issues - it's actually been rumoured that they used cracked software themselves

I find this constant talk of "intellectual property" quite funny - the mere fact being that it doesn't really exist. I have a good argument about why software cannot be copyrighted, but I'll delay the posting of that for now

NO WAY:

Me and my family hold the exclusive rights to making fire, the wheel and the plow, So start paying you thieves!!!

LLXX,

I also have an interpretation of the law that essentially precludes you from having unauthorized copyrighted software on your computer, it's called the "EULA" - as soon as you click that "I Agree button or radio button" you are granted a license to use the software, after that it no longer is an unauthorized copy, but, tell that to the judge! I don't think he'd agree even though it is a contract.

SiGiNT

Software is not "intellectual property", LLXX. Patents are "intellectual property", and some ba$tards are trying to make laws in EU to enforce such bestiality. If patents would exist at dijstra times, he would be one richer than m$, as hardly I can imagine anything with a thread without their work.

Software is implementation, not ideas. If you ever read Abrash's DDJSR columns in the middle of ninethies, you'd remember he was explaining how they were making Q1 *during* the development. And this because Carmack always thought that it is design and implementation, not ideas, that makes the difference. I am sure you know that every flow-chart for a problem is slightly different from person to person, as the number of roughly equivalent (same complexity order) solutions to a problem is almost infinite -not counting the order can easily increase but not diminishing

What I think is horrendous are the prices of most software, the absence of a good freeware/shareware alternative, the *trade secrets* that keeps people NOT SHARING IDEAS!!! Damn....