Fwd: Please Stand Against the New Copyright Bill

[William Muriithi]

Leslie,


>
> The only people who will be affected by DRM and its codification in this bill
> are the ones who really do want to live with the letter of the law, like the
> producers of open source software who will be under the gun to write DRM code
> into their applications. This would of course be a disaster for Linux and FOSS.
>
Thought about its effect on FOSS a bit and I can´t see any possibility
of DRM code in this industry. Seriously, this will be very unlikely to
happen. What is likely to happen is DRMed content will not be
available in Linux world.

To give you an idea of how hard it is to introduce DRM in Linux, I
would encourage you to look at what happened to cryptoloop. I don´t
remember who was working on it, but I recall it was someone from NSA.
Someone did mention that it had a weakness and the weakness was
deliberately introduced. From then on, I would not be exaggerating if
I say he had a hostile relationship with other kernel hackers from
then on. I can see similar dynamics if one tried to introduce DRM.

If I interpolate even wider, even the existing windows installations
may not ever support DRM proper. That lack of backward compatibility
may make it almost impossible to implement it. And then, what if it
becomes common for people to unlock the phones? Then it loose the
effect of being dirty. Heck, it may even become moot should the new
wireless entrants overlook locking their phones to attract more
customers.

Anyway, time will tell

Regards,
William
> --
> JoeHill
> ++++++++++++++++++++
> Bender: Well I don't have anything else planned for today, let's get drunk!
>
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