Mark J. Dulcey [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] quoth:
*>
*>This isn't true. DeCSS (either the original, or one of the other
*>programs that does the same thing) is an essential part of any
*>program that will play DVDs. Playing a DVD that you own can
*>hardly be characterized as stealing someone else's property.
*>
*> A CSS descrambling program (css_descramble.c, a later, more
*>efficient program, not the orignal DeCSS code) is being used in
*>the Linux Video project (http://www.linuxvideo.org), which is
*>developing an open source DVD player.
While this is going down the road I didn't want to go and I made the
mistake of using an absolute incorrectly I think you are misunderstanding
what I'm trying to say.
It is futile to legislate morals, in fact pointless, but in a civilised
society one should hope that people behave appropriately...but that rarely
happens. At a place where I used to work, there was a Terabyte or more of
pirated movies and music shared among engineers who could well afford to
purchase them and they thought it very clever and cool to not have to pay.
I've only on rare occasion witnessed a person who was mostly interested in
furthering the technology instead of getting on the free stuff
bandwagon.
I have often wondered what might happen if someone released tools to make
all currently available encryption algorithms easily breakable with a pc,
quickly and easily...some chaos with banking and such would ensue possibly
causing an economic catastrophe for a while. Would people just play with
the tools if they knew that a) they could transfer 2 million dollars to
their bank account effortlessly and b) would they bother if someone else
could steal it right back and c) what would or could the government do to
stop it? I don't think it is an impossible proposition.
I understand, if not condone, the legal actions taken to try and stop
people from doing this. It's a brave new world, things will be rough until
people become more interested in solving the problem agreeably instead of
fighting.
e.
