On 2-Nov-05, at 11:59 AM, Dewey Smolka wrote:
I'm also kind of confused by the whole Tommy Chong thing too. As far as I understood it water pipes were legal, and drug paraphernalia isn't drug paraphernalia until it's been used -- i.e. you couldn't be busted for having a new water pipe, but if that pipe had residue in it you could be busted.
The way it was told in the film there are a handful of states, I think NY is one, where it is illegal to ship drug paraphernalia. Apparently it's a federal crime. Agents posing as customers tried to place orders from NY addresses but Chong's company, aware of the law and the relevant states, refused to take them. The agents then came by the factory in person and placed an extremely large order with a promise to return later to pick up the goods. Of course, they didn't. Instead they insisted that the bongs be shipped to NY. After months of sitting on the order they decided to send it out, mainly to free up space in their shipping area. Shortly after that they were raided.
There was some discussion of logic and fairness and things like that but in the end the point seemed to be if a powerful interest wants to screw you there's generally a way for them to do it. That might apply to video too. However...
Either way, there's a joker in the deck we're forgetting about: In the US there's tens of millions of people with hundreds of millions of hours of home video on tape, and many of those people want to convert those tapes to DVD. If they are prevented from doing that by law, there will be a serious consumer backlash.
I agree. People are open to measures that are reasonable but DRMing everything with a moving part isn't. On the other hand I haven't really heard the people against DRM, and I'm one, say what would be OK. If I was a movie producer and I had just spent twenty million on a negative I'd be pretty unhappy when people started making copies for free. Clearly something needs to be done and I'm wondering what people think that should be. Relying on the honour system, as we do now, isn't working out too good.
- George
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