> >>From David McNab: > >>A Hypothetical Question: > >>If the system of software patents, plus the DMCA and SSSCA, had been > written into law > >>in 1950, what would have happened in the computer industry since then? > >>Think about it. > > > From: "Scott Haman" > > I am working on a research > > paper covering the DMCA law. I was > > wondering if it might be possible if you could give > > a statement or even a partial answer to your query. > > Any time you could spare would be greatly appreciated. > > Hi Scott, > > Thanks for your email. > > A few things I would envisage if DMCA, SSSCA and software patents had > arrived in the 1950s: > > 1) Pace of technology - would have been slower. > > Intellectual property restrictions would pose huge barriers to the 'young > bloods', who have traditionally been a major source of inspiration and > innovation. > > I suspect that it would have taken till approx the year 2020-2040 for > technology to reach the level it reached in 2001 without these restrictions.
<> Many of the orginal hackers at MIT did things that would most certianly be a DMCA violation today. These hackers started on a TX-0, which was one of the first transister-based computers. Later, they got a PDP-1. Upon getting the PDP-1, they shut down the TX-0 (this is a big deal because it was really hard to get a computer back up in those days) and hard coded new instructions into the system (the TX-0 normaly only has address space for four instructions; I have no idea how you can possibly do *anything* useful with four instructions, but they did it). Putting computers in a "locked box" as you describe would most certinaly make this a DMCA violation. The PDP-1 would eventually get a timesharing system. No longer did people have to wait in line; you could have more then one person running a program at a time. This was a great boon for most users. It sucked for the hackers. Not having full and complete control over the system seemed like a horrible idea for them. Further, current timesharing were sub-optimal beasts; hackers don't use sub-optimal software. Still, they had to live with timesharing systems, so they did what any good hackers do: Write their own timesharing software. While they still didn't like the very idea of timesharing, at least they could make a system that was imbibed with the hacker spirit. The result was "Incompatible Timesharing System", or ITS. This would also be a DMCA violation, had it been around at the time. A timesharing system is practicly an operating system; if you're playing around with hardware at that low of a level, then you most likely can disable any "copyright controls" the manufactures have put in. Further, this was in direct compitition with DEC's own system, which came with the PDP. DEC obviously wouldn't like that too much and, today, would have had the knee-jerk reaction of an immediate law-suit. ITS quickly became the standard for timesharing. Eventualy, ITS evolved into MULTICS. MULTICS, unfortunatly, got bogged down in a bunch of incompatible changes. Still, it started with some good ideas. The basic MULTICS system is made of small tools that do one thing, and do it well. You can then combine these tools to do more complex tasks. MULTICS died, but not before a hacker at AT&T created UNIX, which was basicly "MULTICS-lite". UNIX eventualy got a basic networking layer; slow, unreliable, but it worked. This networking layer eventualy evolved into IP, and added TCP for reliablity. So, no ITS = no MULTICS = no UNIX = no Internet. _______________________________________________ Chat mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.freenetproject.org/mailman/listinfo/chat
