On Monday 02 May 2005 16:05, Craig White wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-05-02 at 15:22 -0700, Bryan.ONeal@asu.edu wrote:
> > Not to rehash the intellectual property arguments, but I want to kill the
> > abusive #@!*%($# my wife is unfortunate enough to work with, but I have
> > been 'educated' that this is 'wrong' and 'illegal'. Are you saying I
> > should just say "Umm, I think it is too fucking bad" and skin them while
> > they sleep anyway?
> >
> > Laws are designed to encourage behavior that is healthy for our society
> > and discourage behavior that is unhealthy for our society. Laws that
> > make it possible to protect your creation from abuse is good, forcing
> > these laws on content providers who do not wish to protect their
> > creations is bad. Creating public fear instead of education is also bad.
> > But again, if you purchase a house that has a clear stipulation that the
> > original architect has finale say on any modifications, then you do not
> > have the rite to modify your house without his/her approval. But you do
> > have the rite not to buy the house.
> >
> > [Please remember I believe in fair use, and I believe the RIAA goes to
> > far]
>
> ----
> We are gotten so far afield that I have wondered whether any opinion
> that I may have is worth posting and to that extent, I will limit my
> opinion.
>
> Apparently, there is a notion of a restricted rights on what you
> purchase thereby making it unclear that what you have purchased is yours
> to do as you please. I simply denounce that as unworkable.
>
> I am content, feel empowered to view any dvd that I have purchased on
> any player mechanism that I have purchased and if to accomplish this
> task, I have to implement some code that some court deems this code to
> be illegal, I am ready to suffer the consequences. Of course there
> cannot be consequences so the issue is absurd. Any political entity or
> corporation that seeks to prevent me from doing so would prove its
> hostility and suffer consequences far greater than I.
>
> This notion of purchasing license for use in severely limited form is
> perverse and endemic. Where I can - such as computer software, the open
> source alternatives are so obviously the only true options that a user
> such as myself has. This however enjoys no half-way measures. It makes
> little sense to justify running openoffice.org or mozilla on a Macintosh
> or Windows machine as you cannot get beyond the hostile, restricted use
> licensing merely by looking the other way.
>
> Yes, we are a nation of laws and the laws are written by the politicians
> we elect. The process has become entirely subjugated by the two parties
> which have finagled the laws to entrench themselves. The people of this
> country have become indifferent and hasn't become pissed off enough to
> fix the problem. Thus we have the moneyed interests - corporations,
> deciding the politics and hence the laws. This is why we have such poor
> choices as candidates, stupid laws such as DMCA, etc.
>
> Craig
>
This may just be fat for the fire, but I recall a couple things from my old
CB days that might be something of a precedent here:
The FCC allows a person the right to receive and interpret any given
transmission on their personal equipment no matter what the source, provided
that the information so received is not rebroadcast, (or used for illegal
purposes). This is part of the contorversy behind radar detectors, which are
nothing more than legal receivers designed to pick up the radio signal
broadcast by a police radar transmitter. Attempts by law enforcement agencies
to confiscate them and thwart their use are just as illegal as the attempts
by drivers to use them to facilitate speeding. The question is, can a person
be denied the right to know that they are being bombarded with microwave
radiation so a cop can make his quota?
I also remember the Record Industry running a campaign many years ago against
people making "illegal" recordings of their favorite songs broadcast on the
radio. The rumor at the time was that cassette recorders were going to be
made illegal because of that! Now, I hear rumors that computer Video Capture
devices are going to be made illegal as of this June for the same reason.
Also, Re: Jury Nullification and civil disobedience - I was one of the few
during the big CB Boom that bothered to get a CB license (KBF 0253). Within a
year, the FCC abandoned the CB license law as unenforceable, and dropped the
requirement altogether due to the overwhelming number of "illegal" CB radios
in use at the time. What is the point or purpose of a law that cannot be
fairly and practically enforced?
I'm not trying to cloud the issue, I just thought I'd cite a couple similar
situations from the past.
Stu
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