On Sun, Nov 03, 2002 at 12:19:44PM -0500, Noah L. Meyerhans wrote: > The only negative thing I see comming out of TCPA is that content > producers (Hollywood, etc) will release copies of their > movies/music/whatever for download in a format that can only be accessed > on TCPA systems. This is the major threat. Personally, I would not be > bothered by this.
I am, because it goes a bit further than that. In the U.S., RIAA is a subsidized group. There are specific taxes on recording media which are paid to high profile members of this business. Congress has routinely been rewriting copyright law to make the terms of this law more favorable to members of this business. Congress has also passed some broadly scoped laws favoring those who dominate this industry (http://www.riaa.org/Copyright-Laws-4.cfm). Basically, there's a lot of complexity here, and uless we can express the underlying concepts clearly and meaningfully to an otherwise uncaring public I think we can anticipate an ever increasing flood of random restrictions on the legality of software development. I don't think that TCPA will kill open software. But I do think that it's part of an ongoing effort to erode the freedoms which are behind open software. FYI, -- Raul
