Quote:
Originally Posted by scotty1024
Alex,
If you feel a law is too broad in it's powers you work to change the law, you don't break it. Because when you start breaking laws you may discover they protect things you do care about.
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I don't think things are quite that simple. It seems to me that these laws are passed to protect the perceived business interests of the businesses involved, without much concern about what users care about. Users aren't organized, and don't make campaign contributions. To the extent that users vote, they have other concerns that dilute their relative effectiveness in dealing with this particular problem.
When you have the Congress extending copyright laws to protect the Disney Company's copyrights for 70 years, it's hard to sustain any belief that the same Congress really gives a damn about the rest of us.
The DRM regime, insofar as I have experienced it, reminds me very much of the way that liquor distributors here in Illinois have managed to maintain an outmoded and inefficient system of liquor distribution, concentrated in the hands of a few businesses, by preventing Illinois residents from being able to buy wine from out of state, over the internet. The purpose is to enrich the distributors by requiring everyone to do business with them, if they want to buy a bottle of wine.
I mean, look at this - the logical result of this DRM law is that I have to be prepared, as a reader, to purchase a dedicated ereader for each business which sells ebooks, if the sellers all decide that they want to so limit the use of what they sell. And further, there seems to be no reason why these sellers can't prevent me from uploading public domain texts, if they want to.
That's like telling me that if I want to buy gas at BP, I have to use it in a Ford, while if I want to buy gas at Shell, I have to use it in a Honda. And if I understand the business relationships involved with Amazon & the mobi format, it's as if Exxon is saying that if I want to buy gas at an Exxon station, I have to use it in a Saab, but if I want to buy gas at Mobile, I have to use it in a Toyota, and this even though the same company owns each brand of gas.
It's not merely that the system is stupid. It is that it is deliberately designed to insure that the end user has to live with whatever the sellers want to do.
That's not law. That's a system of economic thievery disguised as law.