On 17 Jun 2003 14:44:59 +1000 Stephen Kuhn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> uttered:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/926304.asp?0si
The open source community will never accept DRM, and will never build it into their software.
The worst case scenario, as you have pointed out, is still not very
attractive. That it will be *illegal* to produce software that is not
DRM enabled.
Possible but unlikely. I can see a few ignorant/bought US senators going for it, but the EU? No way, especially with Germany's third largest city running Linux. So, for that matter, do the NSA and the Department of Homeland Security.
In that case, we will all become rebel outlaws, a position I most heartily accept, as I know you do. Let me be a criminal. Let them put me in prison for using a non-DRM-enabled OS on my PC. How many prisons are they going to build? Are they going to put Linus Torvalds in prison? The next Nelson Mandela, LOL, his arrest record would be hacked out of existence in seconds, the entire judiciary would be shut down within a day. To paraphrase a great man, "they know not what they do, and who is going to do it back to them IN SPADES..."
The idea of Linus in prison, although far-fetched, is extremely amusing, as would be the backlash. Most of the Internet runs on Apache, and if there's one thing Linux hackers know well, it's Apache.
Another thing to keep in mind though, the geeks are always one step ahead of the technocrats. They simply do not understand what they are dealing with. The last time they issued a challenge to crack their digital watermark (that took them months to build), the data came back cracked in under a day? And how long do you think it would take to get around those encrypted e-mails?
Interesting. Got a link?
The phone company has been combatting phreaks for how long now?
I didn't know phone phreaking was still going - I first read about it in the 1970s, and assumed it had been eclipsed by the Internet.
Microsoft does not have enough brains to figure out basic security after over 30 years in operation. They will never outpace the hackers among us.
Amen to that. But I still think the important thing is the legit side - making alternatives, informing the public, fighting legal battles and so on.
Sir Robin
-- "Some guy breaking into a government computer system and wreaking havoc makes for a more interesting movie plot than some guy writing device drivers. It's hard to work in a good 10-minutes car chase scene with some guy who writes device drivers..." - tjc, post to LWN
Robin Turner IDMYO Bilkent Univeritesi Ankara 06533 Turkey
www.bilkent.edu.tr/~robin
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