HP Makes Perens Bail Out On "Illegal" Demonstration
from the be-a-good-employee-now dept
Earlier this week, we mentioned that Bruce Perens was planning to purposely violate the DMCA tomorrow to draw some attention to how stupid the law was. The news of that bit of civil disobedience spread pretty widely, very quickly. It spread to some of his higher ups at his employer, HP, and they’ve told him not to do the demonstration because they don’t want to deal with the legal consequences. Chilling effects? Seems like it.
Comments on “HP Makes Perens Bail Out On "Illegal" Demonstration”
No Subject Given
I don’t know if you can bring in the “chilling effect” bogeyman in this particular case. To me, it applies more when someone wants to talk about something or do something and someone else says, “If you do that — even though it is probably legal — I will sue you or not do business with you or harrass you in some other way.”
In this case Perens was going to do something which he admits is illegal. Now the DMCA is bogus and it *shouldn’t* be illegal, but it is. Imagine if Perens said he was going to go up and smoke a joint on stage, and HP told him not to. Would this be considered a chilling effect and HP being wusses, or just being sensible as a corporation?
– adam
Re: No Subject Given
> Imagine if Perens said he was going to go up and smoke a joint […] Would this be considered a chilling effect and HP being wusses.
…bunch of wusses.
Next time try a better hypothetical.