Hi Tom.
I could ask my brother for the full details, but As far as I know it is the
torrenting process that is specifically illegal, not the gpl license. I've
freely downloaded lots of stuff from pendent productions, darker projects,
podiobooks etc, and programs like 7zip, chipamp etc, and there are lots of
people in the uk using nvda. none of them get prosecuted, however you could
be for using bit torrent as a process.
While the copywrite laws are indeed ridiculous, in reality, ---- someone
will never be investigated for breaking those laws unless they are
attempting to prophit from them, because police in the uk are generally much
more relaxed and focused on actual crime, mostly because when such cases do
get to court the judge would probably just dismiss them because judges in
the Uk have far more legal power than in the states.
It's like the laws related to drugs. A couple of mine are quite major
canabis users, but never tak anything else. They've had the police in their
house while they were smoking weed, and the police didn't bat an eyelid,
sinse the police are far more concerned about people dealing in heroin,
cocane etc than a couple of lads who like interesting tobacco.
indeed I've admitted on local radio myself that I've taken cannabis, which
was absolutely fine as far as the law goes.
This is the case Mary warnock makes for the way euthanasia is treated in the
Uk, being that while it is technically! illegal, and cases will be brought
to trial, in practice nobody has ever actually gone to jail for performing
it because everytime it's got to trial the judge has dismissed the case.
So, while laws in the Uk are indeed more draconian when it comes to general
copywrite, and while this is severely annoying for getting anything
accessible (as I've said, the government is less than committed to
accessibility), I don't think we'll ever see people getting their daws
bashed down by the police for having copywrite stuff on their computer so
long as they don't try to make money by selling it. Heck, my brother! is a
solicitor and is so straight according to the law you could use him as a
ruler yet has lots of copied cds and audio books, and several peaces of open
source software.
Actually I'll ask him about this next time I speak to him, sinse it's an
interesting issue, and it might be that I have my facts wrong, or that the
law has changed recently.
As to standing up to the government and changing their mind, ---- well any
faith I had in the possibility of doing that went out of the window the day
when myself, along with about a million other people wandered the streets of
london to say we didn't want a war, where upon not only did we have! a war,
but we had a war for a reason that was a total lie.
This is actually becoming a major problem in the Uk, confidence in the
government and voter turn out has dropped to such a ridiculous level, indeed
that's why at the moment we don't even have one party in power but have this
coalition government because nobody actually got enough votes to gain the
needed majority.
that is why the government has been trying to drumb up publicity, with first
the royal wedding, then the jubalee, now the olympics, but sinse they've
been spending millions on these events (the opening ceremony for the
olympics will cost 60 million pounds in just thirty minutes), while at the
same time making cuts left right and center to cope with the recession and
reducing budgits to everything! among lots of people this hasn't gone down
well at all as you can imagine, ---- especially when during the parades for
the royal wedding the police were going around the streets removing posters
which protesters had tacked up saying things like "we can't afford this!"
Getting back to copywrite though, while I absolutely agree with you that the
major law should be changed, in practice because the law inforcement system
is a bit more flexible, it doesn't make too much difference to individuals
that it isn't.
Beware the Grue!
Dark.
---
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