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Re: debian-multimedia.org considered harmful



On 03/11/2012 09:37 AM, Mike Hommey wrote:
> 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.

Why so? If I make a copy for backup and want to use it, how would I do
that without use of decss or similar? Or is making a backup copy no
legitimate use anymore?

I think it's very stupid to make it illegal to distribute software just
because it *can* be used illegaly. One always punishes the legitimate
users in such cases and introduces an alternative (sometimes illegal)
distribution channel of the software.

Cheers

Luk


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