Read about the latest and most sickening episode of ‘computer destruction legislation’ to be evaluated in the US.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,51274,00.html
Summary: You write code? You debug code? You use code? Well, if this law ever passes, you’re a criminal.
i’m swiss, i don’t care 
I hope not in south-america.
This is issue has been running for a few months now(maybe more).
There are a lot of people fighting against it. Intel is one of those. I hope they win for the sake of US. Because I am not going to touch a piece of hardware with those protection chips with a thirty foot poll.
I cannot even believe this is going to work!. People will just stick much longer with their old computers and that will cripple profit of US companies.
And obviously, someone will be able to break their protection one day anyway!
It’s absolutly ridiculous.
I’m glad I live in Canada
I’m just happy nothing like this is talked about in Sweden (well not that I have heard about anyway). I can’t see how a system like this would work.
Yes, it’s basically old news but it needs a lot of attention.
And I don’t think you’re safe because you live outside the US. I’m located in Germany, so why should I care?
Simple, if this passes, the international software and hardware industries (and communities) will melt down. You can’t make your stuff accessible to US citizens, so you can’t publish your stuff on the internet anymore. Look what happened to Skylarov under the DMCA - which is childs play in comparison. Same thing for US citizens, publishing code on the internet means making it available for ‘export’. Not to mention that the US are still the largest producer and consumer of both software and hardware. The ‘US-law-conformant’ hardware will be everywhere. Your biggest market can’t legally access your stuff.
I think we’re all royally screwed, world wide, if this stuff makes it through.
This could be bad depending upon how the final standards are written. If they fail to add exemptions to various catagories of software, they could potentially outlaw my hobby. 
What good is it to write programs if I can’t share what I programmed, even if it has no intended media copying functionality?
Originally posted by zeckensack:
B] The ‘US-law-conformant’ hardware will be everywhere. Your biggest market can’t legally access your stuff.
I think we’re all royally screwed, world wide, if this stuff makes it through.[/b]
I agree it will be really bad, but maybe not royally screwed, just screwed.
Take DVD players for example. You are aware the DVD are encoded for different regions Noth America, Europe, etc. Well in the US you can pretty much only buy NorthAmerica region DVD players(because of a law), but in the rest of the world you can easely find DVD players that plays all regions.
But obviously this law covers many more things and would give a big hit in the economy that is for sure.
Crickey!
Originally posted by Gorg:
[b] I agree it will be really bad, but maybe not royally screwed, just screwed.
Take DVD players for example. You are aware the DVD are encoded for different regions Noth America, Europe, etc. Well in the US you can pretty much only buy NorthAmerica region DVD players(because of a law), but in the rest of the world you can easely find DVD players that plays all regions.
But obviously this law covers many more things and would give a big hit in the economy that is for sure.
[/b]
Who cares about DVD. Besides, that regional BS has been cracked from day one. The DVD codec has been cracked as well.
Remember the Clipper Chip/SkipJack thing for modems. Dead meat before it was even suggested.
How about PGP?
You guys worry too much about nothing.
V-man
Uhm… almost everyone is agains this… so it’s the whole world against the CBDTPA (and Hollywood and some other companies)
The CBDTPA may kiss my royal butt, because I will never ever do what they want me to do.
And I hope all other programmers and associated people will do the same because this may never ever happen (thinking of the current Micro$oft monopoly)
Sounds like Nazi Germany in the run up to the invasion of Poland.
I know that’s where the similarity ends, but the sentiment is almost the same, except its now commerce instead of Nazis.
luckily I’m not living in the USA, and I really don’t care if I can’t release my game there. I even don’t care if their hardware comes with some kind of protection… If it will, I wont buy it and that’s it. The same for the hollywood movies… they’re crap anyway. I think the big companies can’t live with piracy, but we can live without them.
“the land of freedom”… HA! 
_> Royconejo.
Originally posted by V-man:
Who cares about DVD. Besides, that regional BS
I know, but if you have a standalone DVD player(one like a vcr) it is a bit annoying for mister everybody to crack the software!
[b]
You guys worry too much about nothing.
[/b]
Agree, I don’t even see how this can pass, it would be one of the some most stupidest decision ever taken in the world! 
But there a lot of weird things happening in software in the US, like all those software patents that have corporation hitting small companies with lawsuit. There seems to be one reported everyweek on slashdot.
So, I would not be suprised if smaller scoped, but still annoying and worthless version of this law passes.
Originally posted by Gorg:
But there a lot of weird things happening in software in the US, like all those software patents that have corporation hitting small companies with lawsuit. There seems to be one reported everyweek on slashdot.
LOL! yeah I forgot about this story. People were discussing it on hardware ng I was on.
Remember the woman who filed a patent on her genetic makeup. Patent office wasnt sure if they should accept it!
Then a man (in Australia I think) writes up some fancy papers about a new technology and it gets accepted. It was a wheel and he was claiming it to be his.
V-man
I don’t think we have much to worry about here. Lawmakers draft crazy bills like this all the time; probably just to put themselves at the center of attention. They almost never get passed (the DMCA being an exception).
Besides…even if it does go through, we’ll have more than two and a half years to learn Japanese and move out.
Read about it, and it is indeed new news. A similar thing called the SSSA was already panned, this CBDTPA is the ‘rerelease’.
[This message has been edited by zeckensack (edited 03-26-2002).]
If we have an official national copy protection scheme for software, wouldn’t that be even less secure than designing a system on a per-program basis? If the former were implemented, it need only be broken once and then the whole of US software would be compromised.
The whole idea of attaching some protection mechanism to code is ridiculous. What defines code? Wouldn’t that include javascript and HTML? What about plain english? Spoken english? Putting copy protection into every spoken word would be a challenge.
Actually, any federally approved copy protection mechanism would be allowed. Thus, anyone who could write a bit of code and snowjob a few underpaid federal employees would have a licensing business. Could be quite lucrative, if you had the connections.
I wonder if you could make a LGPL copy protector and then get it federally approved?