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Legal Issues

by Mike Masnick

Wed, Jul 24th 2002 11:40am





Breaking The Law In The Name Of Free Speech

from the crack-DRM-onstage dept

Bruce Perens is trying to drum up some publicity for his plans to explain how to crack some DRM technology in a DVD player at O'Reilly's Open Source conference on Friday. Doing so will be against the DMCA law, and could potentially get him into trouble. That's part of the reason he's doing it. It's clear that a good test case is needed to show just how bad some of the DMCA clauses are, but I'm not sure flaunting ways to break the law will be that convincing to a judge. It would be much more useful if a more straightforward case were brought to court, instead of one that appears to be set up just to make a statement.

3 Comments | Leave a Comment..


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  1.  

    Legal ramifications would be interesting

    identicon
    reader, Jul 24th, 2002 @ 1:03pm

    He bought the player from eBay, which was already modified. I am not sure but one can argue; "I didn't do that, I am just explaining what could be done or what someone else has done". Explaining a hack made by someone else may not necessarily qualify for a larger penalty or may not even be considered a crime, if one can argue well.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    Re: Legal ramifications would be interesting

    icon
    Mike (profile), Jul 24th, 2002 @ 1:10pm

    Ah, but the point is he *wants* to be accused of a crime. He's trying to break the law, so that (hopefully) he can fight the law itself in court, to show that it's unconstitutional. He's not trying to get around the law - but to publicly violate it.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  

    No Subject Given

    identicon
    MLO, Jul 25th, 2002 @ 6:57am

    Uh, flashing the BIOS anyone? Most BIOS update downloads still come packaged with the files for a boot floppy, or an executable that is meant to be copied to a bootable floppy.

    MLO

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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