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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Adrian Midgley wrote: > On Sunday 05 January 2003 02:11, you wrote: > > I think a useful line of attack is on "fair use". Alas "fair use" is a US legal term :-( Fair dealing might work, but you have to appreciate this is a shift in the basis of copyright, at least as far as works protected by technical measures - which will include pretty much all CD's and DVD's soon if the music and film publishing giants get their way. > The more widely fair use is interpreted the less trouble we risk for doing > sensible things. > > I buy a DVD, In order to use it I need to descramble it. How can doing such > a thing not be fair use. For instance. If the tool you use for descrambling is not authorised by the scrambler, your possession of it constitutes a criminal offence under the new rules. Think of it like a gun, up till recently it was okay to shoot rabbits, but the law changed and owning the gun is now illegal. More specifically it is likely to be illegal to make and distribute such software, ownership is likely to be illegal only if you use it for copying. But if you can't legally obtain it in the first place.... The requirement is likely to be "commercial significant non infringing uses", although what "commercially significant" means the nice guys from the patent office could not answer. The fear of course is that the law will be used to bully free software authors - who may have trouble proving a commercial significant non-infringing use - even if a lot of people use it for non-infringing uses. The whole basis of copyright law is shifted by these amendments, you now only own the media, the control of the content remains with the copyright holder, attempts to move it across media where the copyright holder has attempted to prevent this by technical means will be illegal. So had you wanted to rip your CD's to play on you car's MP3 player - nope that is going to be illegal. I don't think the public will take much notice of the new law, but laws that everyone ignores just bring the legal system into disrepute. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQE+GDXJGFXfHI9FVgYRAsprAJ4xXkZjeX5UkT2jX5SkjboGL8cv9QCgt/YT uuQ44rCq69IgCCr8Wi0/z1k= =9QSZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe.