On Fri, 2004-01-23 at 11:49, Bryan Murdock wrote: > Let's take an e-book for an example. Let's say some company, lets call > them Clay, starts selling e-books with DRM meant only for Palm pilots. > Joe Nongeek buys the latest Stephen King thriller e-book and decides > he'd like to make a copy for his friend. Is the DRM going to deter > him? Aboslutely. What's he going to do, take a picture of his palm for > every page of the book? Maybe he'll re-type the whole thing himself? > Probably not, so here you go, DRM has worked for Clay, and that is why > it'll work good enough for most everyone.
How can a machine determine whether a use is infringing or not? Consider that for the really tough cases, judges and juries agonize to come to consensus. Can or should we write software to replace them? Consider these examples. What if Joe is giving his copy to his friend? What if Joe wants to lend out his copy ala a library? What if Stephen King's copyright expires so now Joe is legally allowed to make copies? What if Congress does something sane and reduces the term limits on copyrights? What if Joe is writing a review for his local book club and wants to quote a section? What if Joe wants to back up his e-book to guard against theft of his Palm Pilot? I haven't heard of a DRM system yet which can cover all those bases, and I won't accept one that doesn't. And no, I don't think any of those examples are far fetched (except maybe the one about Congress). As another concrete example, I make copies of most of my DVDs onto VCD. Yes, they are pretty low quality but good enough for my purpose namely to protect them from my 2 year-old son. No way I'm risking a $20 DVD when I can give him a $0.25 CDR instead. Technically, I've circumventing a copyright protection device to do it (thank you Jon), but the acts of making backups and space shifting have been supported by the courts. Corey ____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
