Not in our country! Our "leaders" wouldn't do that!
More and more I get the feeling that some hardball needs to be played, or else the technical industries are going to have their (pardon the expression) nuts ripped off by Mickey Mouse.
Let's put on a show! Or just blackmail people.
Laws that are bad for the tech sector will make us develop systems that make it easy for anyone to bypass laws. And that's not healthy. Read your Bruce Sterling, folks.
Re:SSSCA
pudge on 2002-04-25T11:53:36
I've not read my Bruce Sterling, but that is the bottom line: laws this bad will be ignored by anyone who can ignore them. There is no possible way that hackers will accept having DRM hardware on their computers, for example. If it must come on every new computer, then people will remove it, or bypass it, or build their own computers. Linux either won't require it or will have a simple hack to get around it. It won't hurt the pirates, who will continue as they always have. It will hurt the media companies -- as many people will now pirate because they CAN, just to show spite -- and the computer companies whose products are now being eschewed. Microsoft is against this because it means a loss of business for them.Re:SSSCA
chaoticset on 2002-04-25T13:03:13
Microsoft is against this because it means a loss of business for them.Mixed feelings concerning Microsoft aside, what have you heard?
Re:SSSCA
pudge on 2002-04-25T13:17:04
I've not heard anything specific, but all other considerations aside, if you want to pirate music and video, and you can do it under Linux easily but not Microsoft, which would you choose? Or taking it further, what about DVDs and CDs that will only be playable under certain conditions under Windows? Microsoft is far more bound to the SSSCA than is Linux or BSD, because Linux and BSD are freely available and easily modifiable, so their creators are less culpable (not to mention that they can just move the Linux source repository overseas, if it isn't there already). Microsoft has nothing to gain in the SSSCA and has quite a bit to lose in market share.Re:SSSCA
chaoticset on 2002-04-25T17:14:14
I've seen people shoot themselves in the foot before. I believe that logical thinking would preclude Microsoft from supporting it; but I also believe logical thinking would have prevented anybody from ever proposing it in the first place.I hope you're right.
The problem isn't so much that it will be impossible (it won't, as you say -- it'll be outlawed, but nobody's going to let a little piece of hardware interfere with their software development), but that it will be illegal.
Should you build a piece of software the government/Disney is happy with, they probably won't say a thing. If you build a piece they don't like, however, they'll throw you in jail.
Stupid laws that cannot be correctly enforced result in casual enforcement, enforcement when someone doesn't like you or doesn't like what you have to say.
