[sdiy] *DMCA* The R in RSA on the SSSCA aka CBDTPA (fwd)

[CHoaglin at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/22/02 1:54:11 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
atom at suspicious.org writes:


> this law would put a digital cop in every sampler, synth, drum
> machine, digital recorder, etc....
> because they *COULD* be used to make an unauthorized copy of copyrighted
> material.
> 
> http://anti-dmca.org/
> 
<rant>

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 info 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 
uninformed 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....

</rant>

-Chris
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