free Dmitry!!!!!!

[Boroda]

The problem is that Big Brother understood that creative people got means to avoid total control and robbery from recording companies, publishers, distributors - whatever you call them.

All that crap with DVD, SDMI etc has only one purpose - to help them keep their profits.

Strange, but when it gets mixed with Soviet-type "thought control" it looks much more dangerous. Two worst sides of two societies combined.

[Fatty]

Woah there.  Any writer, musician, filmmaker any other media related artist, or even programmer can quite easily distribute their works free of charge via the internet.

That they don't is not thought control, it is because they want to get paid.  The contracts between them and the distributers are an entirely seperate matter, but you can rest assured if they wanted people to get their things for free they would distribute them for free (as some do).

[fd ski]

Fatty, as it stands, music stores sign exclusive contracts and are basically black mailed into not carring anything else.

Ticketmaster has a total grasp on the most venues, good luck getting tickets if you're not an insider.... Tool concert in NYC sold out in 45 seconds from opening, second person inline didn't even get them  

it's a rotten system and long ago squashed any competition. "they can do it on their own" only if they have second jobs to feed them, cause otherwise they can't get themselves sold, published or publicised.

[Fatty]

Why would you want to go through record stores if you were giving it away free anyway?  Distribution contracts aside, not even the most altruistic artist is going to want to go through the costs of getting CDs across the country, much less worldwide.  Especially when there are electronic methods to do so without cost.

I don't think the bands that are selling out full sized arenas are the ones that need the worry, and ticketmaster hardly has a grip on the unnumerable smaller clubs across the country.  I think Tool will be okay.

So underpaid artists is a justification of robbing them of the little they get?  Somehow the argument has gone from robbing a creator of their work, to justifying it because they're not paid enough?

[mietla]

Originally posted by fd ski:
Well, she's out looking for a cello now  
If you would happend to have a spare Montaniana laying around, can she borrow it ?  

Friend of mine has a 1679 Amatti and a Dominic Peccatte bow, would it do  ?

 

Arts are useless in capitalistic society, alwyas were always will be. If it doesn't make a profit, why do it ?

Clearly we need to legislate that. How's this? Everybody has to go see an opera twice a month? IRS could enforce that  

 

I'm happy to pay for keeping her happy. She makes some money of her tours, and i make more then eough for both of us  

Wtg, best wishes for the missus!

[Boroda]

In USSR we definetly had class society: people who go to the Opera, and people who prefer cheap Porto  

[Dmitry]

You see what makes me angry is different:
While Dmitry decrypted the Adobe's Ebook thousands others are trading, giving away and reseling millions of copys of Adobe software and other's companies. If you stop assuming what purpose might be of Dmitry's actions and look at action of so called Warez makers. The companies such as Adobe love to whine: Oh those Pirates are screwing so much our bisseness... and yet do nothing about it. Whould it be difficult to stop those pirates? Think not... Will we do it in near future? think not.

[TK_421]

AKDJ,

What he did is perfectly legal in Russia.  

That is the problem.

If you drive 95 miles an hour in Montana, and go give a speech in Georgia about how cars could go faster, would you expect the Georgia state patrol to ticket you for speeding?

Further, all he did was write a program taht enables copying.  Like a VCR.  

But if you used your VCR to distribute illegal tapes, noone would sue Sony or thier employees.  It's not thier problem to supervise you.

In other words, programs (and thier authors) don't violate copyright, people do.

Diche/TK

[TK_421]

Ripsnort :

If I bought and paid for a safe, I could do what I want to it, including break into it, or figure out how it works, right ?  After all, it's mine, who is to tell me what to do with it ?

So if I then figure you how to open the safe easily, I could tell you, couldn't I ? after all, I have a right to free speech, do I not ?  Reverse engineering is perfectly legal, and dissemination of the discovered techniques is proteted speech (read about IBM BIOS, or SAMBA sometime).

So if my technique worked against bank vaults and I published a paper on how to break into them, what exactly would I be gulity of ?

Would it the same as publishing a book tellin you how to build a molotov cocktail ?  Or perhaps a hydrogen bomb ?  

Both are very dangerous, in the wrong hands, and both are constitutionally protected forms of speech.  I do not see how a discussion on how to pick locks would not deserve such protection.

Do a search on google for Professor Felten sometime.

Diche/TK

[Pongo]

If discharging a gun is legal where you live but one of your bullets crossed the street to the next country and killed someone there..did you commit a crime?

[AKDejaVu]

TK, your analogy doesn't work.

Try this:

<analogy>Dm is dealing child pornography over the web.  He has a site that allows anyone from around the world to purchase images and then download them.

He then comes to the US <or virtually any sane nation on the face of the earth> and goes to a generic pornography seminar to lecture.</analogy>

*This analogy is overboard to make a point.  Both crimes have victims <though one much more severe than another> and do not require physical residence in a nation to be a considered a criminal act in that nation.*

The writing of the program is not the issue.  Selling in the US is.  Those Americans that purchased it were sitting in nice litle chairs firmly planted in the USA.  No warnings or attempts to prohibit sales inside of the US was made.  Thus the law was broken.  All we really needed was for him to be in the US while that site was up.  The D.A. from that state is gratefull that dmitry oblidged.

AKDejaVu

[TK_421]

AkDJ,

He's being held for distributing an access control circumvention device, which unlike kiddie Pr0n is not illegal to create, or own.  It is at this point illegal to distribute in America, but the reasons why that law is bad is a seperate rant entirely.

Specifically, he broke the part of the Ebook that dictates how (read aloud, or just text), where (which PC), you could access a work you purchased legally.  This is very alarming!

Would you ever take seriously a shrinkwrap license on the cover a real book that said that under penalty of law you could only read that book using GE lights, and that you have no other first sale rights ?  

That is exactly the step taht Adobe is trying to take with thier Ebooks.  Content producers have for years tried legal methods of abrogating first sale rights (reselling, loaning, etc.) to no avail.  Now they are using technology to do it.  

Your second point about Americans buying the software is very good.  The fault in the logic is that it ignores the question of why the responsibility for ensuring legal compliance of american citizens should fall on a russian company, and not the american government ?  If the loctions of the purchasers butts are important, why not the sellers bellybutton as well ?

The implications of such a scheme are important, as you hold the merchant responsible for keeping track of every law, in every jurisdiction the world over.  This is very clearly untenable, and not currently how it is done.

Also, you fail to consider the technical limitations (IP_Masq, NAT, etc.) of fixing an IP address in meatspace.  France has been trying for years, with little success.

TK/Diche