Re: debian-multimedia.org considered harmful
On Sun, Mar 11, 2012 at 09:16:47AM +0100, Adam Borowski wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 11, 2012 at 03:53:18AM +0000, brian m. carlson wrote:
> > On Sun, Mar 11, 2012 at 01:39:13AM +0100, Adam Borowski wrote:
> > > On Sun, Mar 11, 2012 at 11:00:30AM +1100, Ben Finney wrote:
> > > > Your complaint, then, is against those who use the law to restrict your
> > > > use of your legally-acquired DVD or Blu-Ray disc and disingenuously call
> > > > it “protection”. It is misdirected against the Debian project.
> > >
> > > In other words, until non-US comes back, d-m.o can't go away.
> >
> > I think this demonstrates a lack of understanding about non-US. non-US
> > was for things that could be legally used everywhere, but could not be
> > *exported* from the US without serious hassle. non-US was *not* for
> > things which could not legally be used in the US.
>
> Old non-US did, yeah. The new need for geographically limited distribution
> has different rules.
>
> > And I would like to point out, for the record, that it is not only the
> > US that has stupid laws. Yes, we certainly have more than our share,
> > but, for example, Germany has stupid laws that prevent certain video
> > games from being played,
>
> Yet I don't see [Free]Doom excluded from Debian while decss is. That's the
> big difference here.
>
> > and Australia also has stupid video game laws that could be interpreted as
> > being binding against Debian.
>
> And Debian carries, say, Nethack, which has a sex scene (several lines of
> text, but still...).
>
> > I'm sure that every country has laws which are problematic; don't blame it
> > all on the US.
>
> When the totem law of Kbanga declares that displaying any words with two
> consonant clusters is illegal on Fridays, the rest of the world doesn't
> suffer. Being able to pop in a DVD and play it is something an average
> person takes for granted. If oppressive laws in a single country stop a
> good part of multimedia functionality, why should that functionality be
> taken away from everyone else?
The problem is: decss is illegal in very much more than just the US.
This is a very different situation.
Mike
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