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kacir · 03-22-2009, 08:36 AM

I live in a country where we do not have DMCA.
Yet I wanted to see for myself why it is that only an "American Lawyer" (TM) is able to read the dammed thing.

I went to my favorite site for beginning any investigation, Wikipedia.
Wikipedia does, indeed, have a nice article with a nice link to the Library Of Congress that holds THE authoritative version.

Holy $DEITY!
That thing is utterly, completely, totally, hopelessly unreadable. There is no wonder the USA is home to more than half of worlds lawyers.
It took me some time (and lots of checking and research) to believe that I am, indeed, looking at the real thing.

Holy [please insert your favorite swearword here]!
That thing is basically what programmers call "a diff" or "a patch". It tells you to get some laws and treaties and replace a bunch of words here and there, slightly altering or completely changing the law in question.
All you need to apply a patch in a program and get a complete text of "the source" on a Unix system is to change to the directory and issue command 'make patch'. That is it.
I am starting to suspect that to get the real text of what DMCA says is to hire a bunch of lawyers for something like $300 an hour ...

03-22-2009, 08:36 AM	#35
kacir Wizard Posts: 3,463 Karma: 10684861 Join Date: May 2006 Device: PocketBook 360, before it was Sony Reader, cassiopeia A-20	I live in a country where we do not have DMCA. Yet I wanted to see for myself why it is that only an "American Lawyer" (TM) is able to read the dammed thing. I went to my favorite site for beginning any investigation, Wikipedia. Wikipedia does, indeed, have a nice article with a nice link to the Library Of Congress that holds THE authoritative version. Holy $DEITY! That thing is utterly, completely, totally, hopelessly unreadable. There is no wonder the USA is home to more than half of worlds lawyers. It took me some time (and lots of checking and research) to believe that I am, indeed, looking at the real thing. Holy [please insert your favorite swearword here]! That thing is basically what programmers call "a diff" or "a patch". It tells you to get some laws and treaties and replace a bunch of words here and there, slightly altering or completely changing the law in question. All you need to apply a patch in a program and get a complete text of "the source" on a Unix system is to change to the directory and issue command 'make patch'. That is it. I am starting to suspect that to get the real text of what DMCA says is to hire a bunch of lawyers for something like $300 an hour ...