[79274] in Cypherpunks
Re: Bypassing the Digicash Patents
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Wesley Felter)
Tue Apr 29 18:54:39 1997
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 97 16:56:17 -0500
From: Wesley Felter <wesf@mail.utexas.edu>
To: "Cypherpunks" <cypherpunks@cyberpass.net>
Reply-To: Wesley Felter <wesf@mail.utexas.edu>
On 4/29/97 4:35 PM, Tim May said:
>(The Sony Betamax/Disney case was a bit similar...and has been
>much-discussed. There are some interesting parallels to the Barnes/Goldberg
>schemes. It was the _users_ who were not supposed to be making infringing
>copies of the television shows and rented videotapes, just as it is the
>purchasers of digital cash who are using the Chaum blinding patents. But
>the users could not be gone after, so Disney tried to stop the vendors of
>VCRs from making products which would facillitate infringement. The Court
>argued, as I recall, that there are substantial noninfringing uses of VCRs,
>such as making home movies, copying one's own tapes, etc. And they muttered
>about time-shifting, etc. But the real reason, in my IANAL view, is that
>the Court realized that enforcement of such a law would require an
>intrusive police state, that the legal landscape had shifted too much, and
>that home taping, even when infringing, was unstoppable. The choke point of
>paid resale remained, sort of.)
So this is why to connect a digital DVD player to a digital TV you have
to use an analog connection? It's nice to think that it was once the case
that the courts decided to allow the sale of a technology if the legal
uses outnumbered the illegal ones. But now Hollywood and the government
will outlaw or cripple the production of all technologies that *can* be
used illegally. Since they're already planning to implement an intrusive
police state, what's one more?
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| Wesley Felter | |
| | I'm never drinking again. |
| wesf@mail.utexas.edu | |
| http://adhoc.com.inter.net/ | --Nathan Markley, Sunday, 11 AM |
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