MS DRM OS Begets SSSCA

georgemw at speakeasy.net georgemw at speakeasy.net
Tue Dec 18 18:56:02 PST 2001


On 18 Dec 2001, at 20:57, John Young wrote:

> SSSCA is far from dead, it may have a good chance
> of enactment according to Mike Godwin's essay today,
> "Coming Soon: Hollywood Versus the Internet:"
> 

I know he's theoretically one of the good guys, but for some reason
Godwin pisses me off.  


> But what's the "collateral damage," exactly? Perhaps the 
> most likely scenario is this: at some near-future date - perhaps 
> as early as 2010 - individuals may no longer be able to do the 
> kinds of things they routinely do with their digital tools in 2001. 
> They may no longer be able, for example, to move music
> or video files around easily from one of their computers to 
> another (even if the other is just a few feet away in the same 
> house), or to personal digital assistants. Their music 
> collections, reduced to MP3s, may be moveable to a limited 
> extent; unless their digital hardware doesn't allow it. The 
> digital videos they shot in 1999 may be unplayable on their 
> desktop and laptop computers -- or even on other devices -- 
> in 2009.
> 
> And if they're programmers, trying to come up with the next 
> great version of the Linux operating system, for example, 
> they may find their development efforts put them at risk of 
> criminal and civil penalties if the tools they develop are 
> inadequately protective of copyright interests. Indeed, their
> sons and daughters in grade-school computer classes may 
> face similar risks, if the broadest of the changes now being 
> proposed becomes law."
> 
> 
More likely Finns just won't come to the US, and the software
industry will move to Hong Kong or  Thailand or Costa Rica
or basically anywhere but here.  Stupid fucks.  Software can be 
written anywhere, so why is so much written here in the
high cost of labor USA, in particular in the San Fran Fucking
Cisco bay area? Well, people do kinda like it here for whatever
reason, but writing software is one of the few things that you can
do that is still (for now) almost completely unregulated.  Anything
remotely resembling the SSSCA would be the kiss of death for the
American software industry, and worse. The day the SSSCA 
passes is the day I tell Tim May, "I'm sorry I once considered
you an extremist, if anything you weren't extreme enough.
Fuck it to death, and keep fucking the corpse."
  
But I don't think that day will ever come.

George





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