It's won't come with the blast of an a-bomb, it will be with the slam of a lawbook
From SusoSight
| Number: | 51 |
| Date created: | 2002-05-24 15:57:37 |
| Previous Thought: | Don't be a pack rat. You'll never use that stuff. |
| Next Thought: | Stop the portscans. |
| Voting results: | Yes: 15 |
If you haven't heard lately, Sony and other music industry corporations are trying to come up with measures to stop music piracy. One of those developed by Sony will only allow their copy protected CDs to be played in home, car and portable CD players. You can't play them in your computer CD-ROM drive because of a little strip of data on the edge of the CD. Someone on usenet discovered that you can circumvent this hi-tech copy protection using a rather low tech solution. Just take a felt tip pen and draw a ring around the edge of the disc.
So the day I found out about this I thought that it might be profitible to invent a device that makes this process easier and more precise than simply scribling on your CDs. Now enter the DMCA. The DMCA stands for the Digital Millineum Copyright Act and is a quick and very dirty attempt by the people who control our country to stop any kind of software piracy, cracking and so on. According to the DMCA it would be illegal for me to even show the plans for such a device that I've generalized above on my website, let alone make one. This is because it would be considered a device that circumvents copy protection. But at the same time, it is completely legal to put the plans for building an atomic bomb on your website. We (humans) are dumb aren't we.