On Tue, 6 Feb 2001, Patrik Stridvall wrote:
Patrik,
You are most likely correct. Eventually the court system will get their head out of their ass and figure this out.
I hope so.
There's optimism for you - they've had their heads there for years, why change now? They're just getting comfortable...
What do you mean? Who are getting comfortable? The courts?
At the moment it seems to me like its way up in there and they are going "Damn, it's
dark in here".
Well, since the DMCA IMHO is logically inconsistant, that
is not very
suprising. I interpret Judge Kaplan opinion in the DeCSS as "I don't really understand this, but if I blame it on Congress and give the plaintiff the victory I will probably look less a fool in
the eyes of
my peers".
Perhaps. Some of the Slashdot comments on the matter won't have helped, though...
With peers I was refering to fellow and especially superior court Judges not just anybody that criticized him.
What Judge Kaplan basicly said was this is, judging from the letter of the law, what Congress meant and if if they didn't mean this, they should have put it more clearly and if so it is their fault not mine. Shifting blame is quite popular in all sectors of society. :-)
Even my dad could easily see the argument that restricting someone from writing a program is really
really braindead
(although he has done coding way back in the day). His response was that eventually the court system will figure it out and it'll be over and done with. Seems to be much the same as your response.
Yes, approximately, but don't forget that in the worst case laws can be changed and in the meantime enforcing it will be close to impossible.
Indeed. It'll probably survive for a while, but with more and more holes being cut...
More holes? It is already has holes big as barn doors. :-)
One intresting aspect concerning Wine is the DRM (Digital Rights Management) that Slashdot reported that Microsoft are going to add to Windows.
If we implement it is Wine we are not trying to circumvent it quite the opposite we are trying to to make it possible enforce it. ;-)
Of course a one line patch making a critical function always return TRUE or something might be able to disable it for people that don't like it. :-)