Comment Some thoughts.. (Score 1) 315
How about reverse engineering in fair use? Competition is one of the fundamental building blocks of capitalism. Competition would essentially be eliminated in certain sectors (electronics, mechanics, etc) if reverse engineering was made "illegal" under these new fair-use laws, which are part of the second half of the DMCA. No longer would manufacturers of competing products be able to reverse-engineer to figure out how new and innovative products were created, and how to improve on them and/or create a worthy equivalent product. Worst case scenario is that this would lead to eventual monopolies in certain niche sectors of the marketplace.
That is just one situation that could have the potential to be a strong argument.
After reading the editorial in the current issue of 2600, which addresses these issues, I gained quite a bit of insight into this matter. It was actually rather sad to hear about all the things that are being done by local, state and federal governments, coast to coast, with regards to keeping information out of the hands of people. It's getting very real.
The second half of the DMCA, which proposes these new fair-use laws, were pretty much unanimously agreed upon in the House and Senate by a voice vote. And that is simply because nobody understood the full story, because many details were kept in the dark. Clinton simply needs to sign it into law. I'm sure with both of the boneheaded candidates up for running now (Bush and Gore), they will sign it if it doesn't come to pass at the end of Clinton's term. Both candidates are very pro-censorship and pro-religious_right, both of which go hand in hand with preventing society from knowing things they don't need to know.
We need to "become the media", like Jello Biafra said at the H2K keynote.
But honestly... who didn't see this coming?
That is just one situation that could have the potential to be a strong argument.
After reading the editorial in the current issue of 2600, which addresses these issues, I gained quite a bit of insight into this matter. It was actually rather sad to hear about all the things that are being done by local, state and federal governments, coast to coast, with regards to keeping information out of the hands of people. It's getting very real.
The second half of the DMCA, which proposes these new fair-use laws, were pretty much unanimously agreed upon in the House and Senate by a voice vote. And that is simply because nobody understood the full story, because many details were kept in the dark. Clinton simply needs to sign it into law. I'm sure with both of the boneheaded candidates up for running now (Bush and Gore), they will sign it if it doesn't come to pass at the end of Clinton's term. Both candidates are very pro-censorship and pro-religious_right, both of which go hand in hand with preventing society from knowing things they don't need to know.
We need to "become the media", like Jello Biafra said at the H2K keynote.
But honestly... who didn't see this coming?
