On Sun, 5 Sep 2004 00:48:07 +0800, Paolo Alexis Falcone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > There was a similar incident in some US state in the past where they > legislated the value of PI to be equal to 3. While they can legislate
... hey, isn't that the one mentioned in "Pragmatic Programmer"? :) > The only thing I see in maintaining the status quo of charging per > reproduction of digital material and subsequent attempts for DRM is > one simple explanation - corporate greed. In order to maintain the > very profitable business they'd go as far as pushing for legislative > measures. Well, we could legislate that gravity does not exist, but IIRC, in the MGM vs Grokster case (quite recent), one of the judges pointed out that the incumbent monopoly (i.e. the recording companies, etc.) should be the ones to adapt; i.e., the judge was asking why the state should extend their statutory monopoly reach into this new form of technology. To quote: "Let me say what your problem is. You can use these harsh terms, but you are dealing with something new. And the question is, Does the statutory monopoly that Congress has given you reach out to that something new, and that's a very debatable question. You don't solve it by calling it theft. You have to show why this court should extend a statutory monopoly to cover the new thing. That's your problem. So address that, if you would, rather than use abusive language." Although the case was about P2P file sharing technologies (in particular the StreamCast network), it is quite related to the issue of DRM. (Essentially, P2P is also about copying files) Transcript here: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040823002045984 MP3 of oral argument here: http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/MGM_v_Grokster/ -- JM Ibanez - A million monkeys can't go wrong... http://www.livejournal.com/~jmibanez/ http://www.mycgiserver.com/~butiki/ -- Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Official Website: http://plug.linux.org.ph Searchable Archives: http://marc.free.net.ph . To leave, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/plug . Are you a Linux newbie? To join the newbie list, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/ph-linux-newbie
