Re:There's more of us than there are of you (Score 1)

Most of the algorhythms I play with only use 8 bits, so they would have to be some pretty dumb terrorists. :)

So you play around with encryption that can be trivially broken? How does that enhance people's privacy? It seems like it would just give naive users a false sense of security. I hope you don't plan on releasing your code.

My point is that one of these things (encryption) is really designed to enhance people's privacy while the other (the codec, at least at this point) is designed to take away intellectual property.

This kind of attitude makes me very sad. This attitude is why the MPAA is winning.

If this were a battle between the artists who create great movies and the pirates who would deprive them of their source of payment, I would side with the artists. But it is not about payment; it is about control. And it's not even about control by the artists; it's about control by the large movie studios. If they succeed in getting the U.S. government to grant them that control, then the studios' shareholders will benefit, and everyone else will suffer -- artists most of all.

If we do not have a free video codec, then we will have only a proprietary video codec, legally playable only using commercial players made by the big studios, or by companies who have signed a strict licensing agreement with them.

I don't know if "Divx Deux" will amount to anything; personally I'm more inclined to place my bets on the Ogg project. But someone needs to do it, and it needs to happen as quickly as possible, before MS MPEG-4 becomes too entrenched.

For more on this topic please read my essay on digital media and the DMCA.