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On Thu, 28 Dec 2006 17:49:38 +0000 David Bell <grimpen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > The paper below claims that there will be a an eventual knock-on effect on the > cost of hardware for GNU/Linux users as a result of the copy protection > mechanisms built into Vista. I like this big best: Note C: In order for content to be displayed to users, it has to be copied numerous times. For example if you're reading this document on the web then it's been copied from the web server's disk drive to server memory, copied to the server's network buffers, copied across the Internet, copied to your PC's network buffers, copied into main memory, copied to your browser's disk cache, copied to the browser's rendering engine, copied to the render/screen cache, and finally copied to your screen. If you've printed it out to read, several further rounds of copying have occurred. Windows Vista's content protection (and DRM in general) assume that all of this copying can occur without any copying actually occurring, since the whole intent of DRM is to prevent copying. If you're not versed in DRM doublethink this concept gets quite tricky to explain, but in terms of quantum mechanics the content enters a superposition of simultaneously copied and uncopied states until a user collapses its wave function by observing the content (in physics this is called quantum indeterminacy or the observer's paradox). Depending on whether you follow the Copenhagen or many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, things then either get wierd or very wierd. So in order for Windows Vista's content protection to work, it has to be able to violate the laws of physics and create numerous copies that are simultaneously not copies. ======================= This has a far wider scope than just Vista or even just DRM. It goes to the heart of copyright on software itself. Software does not exist. Read that again. Software does not exist - it has no physical presence. Even the bits and bytes on a hard drive or CD are just copies of the "software" which is in memory. There is no one place that a piece of software can be said to exist. At any precise moment, the electrons that carry the signals upon which we rely to use software are at indeterminate locations within the circuit. The act of trying to determine such locations changes that location (as detailed above). When a piece of software does not exist in memory, only on a physical medium - i.e. the software is not being run - then all you have is an arrangement of ones and zeroes. It's not software because if you put those ones and zeroes onto a different system, they would not work - they are only a representation of the software, not the software itself. The software will work on both systems but a copy of the software might not. When an object has no physical presence, how can anyone own it? Lots of people and corporations own the equipment that allows the WWW to work but nobody actually owns the WWW itself. Software cannot be stolen because no physical item has been removed. Software cannot be owned or even purchased - only licenced - and due to the nature of software, such licences are self-contradictory if they actually prohibit copying. Who'd pay for shiny coasters that they weren't allowed to put in their computer? Reading the CD means copying the software from the CD into the CD reader buffer, onto the local bus, into RAM and to the screen or wherever. Software *must* be copied to even exist, yet making copies does not change the original. When you read a copy of this email, does that mean there is less data on my computer? When I copy a file to someone else, does that prevent me reading the original? Is it even possible to say which *is* the original? The whole DRM argument is complete bunk. Intellectual Property is an oxymoron because there is no property. Property requires a physical presence. Theft, piracy, stealing, ownership, purchase, all require a physical object. The criminalisation of software requires that software is redefined with some physical presence and that is simply a lie. Software is an expression of thought and speech. Microsoft are powerless to change the nature of software - their attempts only make it harder for everyone else, especially their own users. Has the world gone mad? (or is it just Microsoft?) http://www.1729.com/blog/LookingForAWinWin.html In a similar vein: http://www.arachnoid.com/lutusp/consumerangst.html -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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