Victory over the DMCA

Well looks like the DMCA won't be as strong as the big corporations would like it to. Just yesterday the court ruled that Elcomsoft is not guilty. It's not the time to fire up SoulSeek or KaZaa but to cheer free speech. The details.

Glad to see that victory.

Sanity 1, DMCA 0

http://www.eff.org - I'd like to take this opportunity to pimp the EFF and all their DMCA litigation. If you value your freedoms in the digital world, at least go look and consider donating or even joining as a member.

Though it took them almost 2 months to send me my t-shirt

An important bit:

That's unexpected...

I mean, nobody is supposed to ignore the law for any reason. You can't just kill somebody and pretend that "I didn't know!" or "Sorry, I didn't meant to do that." And I'm not talking about self-defense or anything like that.

Check this out: HR 5522 "To amend title 17, United States Code, to safeguard the rights and expectations of consumers who lawfully obtain digital entertainment. "

Section II:
(6) The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (`DMCA') was enacted as an attempt to safeguard the traditional balance in the face of these new challenges. It gave copyright holders the ability to fight digital piracy by employing technical restrictions that prevent unlawful access and copying. In practice, however, the DMCA also endangered the rights and expectations of legitimate consumers.

You can go to http://thomas.loc.gov/ and look the bill up by it's number above. Anyone ever seen this before or know anything about it?

And for those of you who remember when the DeCSS fiasco started, it started to come to a close yesterday with the sentencing of Johansen to up to 2 years in prison, though the prosecutor (who claims the creation of DeCSS was "a gang crime") is pressing for a suspended 90 day sentence..

[rant]
A lot of people argue that creating this sort of software is "freedom of expression", but I just think it's time we face the fact that Hollywood is evil and wants to suck as much money out of us as possible with whatever they can cram down our throats. Let's see, how many tens of thousands of bands are there? When is the last time I heard a good song on the radio that was released within the past 2 years? And I'm supposed to believe that music-copying kids who couldn't afford $20 CDs anyway are killing the market? Give me a damn break! I bought an Adema CD at work for $2.50 because I kept hearing this really cool song on the radio. Yea... the song from the radio was great... and sounded NOTHING like the garbage on the rest of the freakin' CD! So, now I don't buy CDs unless I can get "damaged" ones at work for $2.50.

I use Linux. I avoid Windows. I can't afford (and wouldn't buy...) a Mac. I have no (worthwhile...) DVD capabilities on Linux, though I have a DVD player in my box. Solution: I don't buy or rent DVDs unless they're "damaged" ones from work ($5.00 a piece ).

I don't download illegal music or videos. I think copying stuff without paying for it is wrong. I also think once you pay for the damn thing you should be able to do whatever you want with it. The whole region-encoding thing is a crooked money making ploy, the same way there's a European/Japanese/States version of most (if not all) video games that get released. Screw it then, I don't buy the stuff anymore...

Course, who would have time to watch/listen to/play the stuff anyway? Between Devshed and /. that pretty much covers all my free time
[/rant]