Cryptogram: Palladium Only for DRM

[bear]

On Wed, 18 Sep 2002, Peter wrote:

>Hi Pete - I'm confused. Are you suggesting that I should enjoy these
>freedoms on SW which I don't have legal rights to?

In emergencies, yes.  Remember the people trying to deal with
and organize the WTC rescue efforts, whose software kept rebelling
because of inappropriately-enforced license issues?  Care to even
estimate the liability for lives lost due to that?  You want to
create a system where they'd have *NO* way to override copyright
in a real emergency, *NO* way to save lives?  No. That's cut and
dried, because Copyright is never an emergency.  Copyright infraction
never costs lives.

I for one don't give a flaming shit whether someone has the
"legal rights" to equipment he has to use in an emergency to
save lives.  When putting automatic enforcement in place
means that lives will be lost, it is a Bad Idea. A company
that did it might (and IMO should) be held liable in court.

Furthermore, if you think that Pd will only be used for legal
purposes by the software vendors and manufacturers who control
it, I strongly suggest you revise your trust model....  I have
seen no indication anywhere that these people are any more
trustworthy than those whose actions you decry. The only
difference is that the scale of abuses which can be perpetrated
by them is staggeringly large compared to the minor abuse of
someone copying a song or running a program out of license.

				Bear


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