[NTLUG:Discuss] MI2 boycott

[Jeremy Blosser]

Brian Koontz [pongo at cinnabar.valtech.com] wrote:
> Jeremy Blosser wrote:
> > If you want to keep this discussion going, please let me know which part of
> > the MPAA's position is "wrong", since you have said previously that you
> > think that a) DeCSS is a tool for copying and b) such a tool is illegal, or
> > at least dubious.  If I got either of those wrong, please correct me, as
> > I'm interested in dialogue, not pigeonholing you.
> 
> Let's get back to basics here, Jeremy, instead of trying to obfuscate
> the issues.  My position is that DeCSS make a poor poster child for
> "software freedom."  The MPAA's position is irrelevant.  Yes, I've read
> the history of DeCSS.  I don't believe everything I read, though (do
> you?).  There are some issues involving the way DeCSS performs the
> actual decryption, and whether this in itself violates certain laws and
> company proprietary interests.  

I don't believe everything I read, and in this case I don't have to.  It's
obvious enough from what the technology in question actually does do what
its purpose and intent is.

> Personally, I have no problem with DeCSS, or Napster, or any other piece
> of software out there.  I do not agree with the MPAA's tactics in trying
> to shut down distribution of DeCSS and prosecute those responsible for
> its creation.  However, there are enough legal issues swirling around
> the whole DeCSS scenario that it simply doesn't make sense to hold it up
> as the embodiment of the software freedom movement.

We'll stick with this, then, and I'll say again that I'm not sure where
you're getting the idea that people are doing this boycott (or anything
else related to DeCSS) as a general software freedom thing.  And by
software freedom I think you mean the idea that "information wants to be
free" and that we should all be free to have the source of software we buy
and do what we want with, so that the position I see you arguing is that we
shouldn't be picking something involved in such an ongoing legal battle as
our "line in the sand" for a free software protest.  If I got that wrong,
correct me.

But that's not why I'm doing this, nor is it why most people I've talked to
are doing this.  I care about open dvd (the kind the law allows under fair
use) as an end in itself.  And so taking a stand on this issue while it's
being fought makes total sense.  "Software" only even comes into the
picture if you consider DVD movies to be software in themselves because
they are digital (which you're free to do, but I'm not doing that) or when
you look at what happen to be the tools used for the processes involved --
but those tools are incidental.  If the MPAA was trying to stop some entire
non-technical means of decrypting DVDs for play on various platforms, it'd
be exactly the same fight.  To me, anyway.

If there is a larger cause we're concerned with here, it's most directly
the one of fair use of information we have legally received a copy of, and
not software at all.

-- 
Jeremy Blosser   |   jblosser at firinn.org   |   http://jblosser.firinn.org/
-----------------+-------------------------+------------------------------
the crises posed a question / just beneath the skin
the virtue in my veins replied / that quitters never win