<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><FONT SIZE=2>In a message dated 3/22/02 1:54:11 AM Eastern Standard Time, atom@suspicious.org writes:
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<BR><BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">this law would put a digital cop in every sampler, synth, drum
<BR>machine, digital recorder, etc....
<BR>because they *COULD* be used to make an unauthorized copy of copyrighted
<BR>material.
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<BR>http://anti-dmca.org/
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<BR><rant>
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<BR>Yes...The law sucks, in fact it *really* sucks....There are serious concerns being raised by lawmakers fortunately, but I think in the end it will come down to who can wield the most political influence in washington, and we all know money talks in the US, probably more so than most other places. Somehow I get the feeling that people like the membership of the list will be defeating said protection schemes as quickly as they can be implemented. If it interferes with people trying to get work done, they will find a way around it, and theres another whole crowd that will crack it just because they can. It'll probably result in US and non-US versions of each product, and it shouldn't be too hard to convert them over (or just import the non-US versions on the sly, like they do with radio scanners now.) In scanners, often it's a code keyed in on front panel keys..employees of various gear manufacturers who don't agree with these sorts of policies will undoubtedly leak such in!
fo anonymously (can anybody say freemail account?) just as they have with scanners. Once it's on the web it'll stay there, since US laws can't do jack-schidt to non-US servers, and google and friends cache everything anyhow. It's already happened with CD copy-protection and CD and DVD players with SDMI inside, they've been hacked right and left and there's entire websites devoted to the topic. There's literally teams of people going around finding any player they can with this technology and hacking it. This SSSCA stuff is also supposed to make open source software illegal (presumably because many aspects of creating said software require reverse engineering, I haven't really read much on that topic). We all know what effect that'll have on open source community, ever walk up to a beehive and kick it hard? Mirror sites right and left, and a 10-fold increase in reverse engineering activity simply as a big fuck-you to the companies backing laws like these and the legislators !
either too corrupt and in the pocket of special interests or too uninf
ormed not to pass this sort of horseshit. The wrath of the geeks, so to speak. This is the root of the problem, of course, that money talks in politics, large corporations are well-connected to legislators, and most of the people making the laws are non-technical and wouldn't understand the technology or the ramifications of trying to regulate it with legislation if you hit them over the head with it....
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<BR>-Chris</FONT></HTML>