-- The camel's nose is already in the tent. With the Dmitri Sklyarov case, and the DeCSS case, we already have bit crimes, where possession of certain software capabilities is an illegal act. Of course, each software capability that is criminalized requires other software capabilities to be criminalized. In the end the law has to legalize them all, or else criminalize them all. In the end, the camel has to be wholly in the tent, with programmer licensing, a ban on the sale of new general purpose computers to unauthorized people, (expect a spate of television shows with demonic computer salemen whose lust for profit empowers international terrorists) and a ban on unauthorized possession of programming tools, or else the camel has to be wholly out of the tent, meaning a free hand to break such inconveniences as regional encoding on DVDs. The natural instinct of businessmen is to do a deal, and the natural instinct of politicians is to compromise and build a coalition, but the nature of the beast does not permit compromise. In the end, it has to be all illegal, or all legal. There is no alternative to confrontation. The MPAA already sees this. Everyone else has to see it also. Anyone who tries to compromise will find that each compromise requires another, considerably greater compromise, in order to make the first compromise workable. With Palladium, Microsoft is promising that they are in favor of it all being legal -- but they are building a tool that would be mighty handy in making it all illegal. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG /JP9/KBIBXDammQ9AdO6t3Pawl6R2W2IHfwHUvV3 29LLhBYnnqc0uhmRQxdAYx+C4Bae7GorYHjNqR12+