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Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:03:50 -0700, Darren New wrote:
>
>> Right. That's why I said "DMCA notwithstanding".
>
> Problem is, we can't choose to ignore DMCA. I'm not sure I follow you
> here.
I meant my opinion/analysis was "DMCA notwithstanding." Not that the actual
law is. I.e., I don't know enough about DMCA to say how it might have
changed the landscape, so if you ignore the DMCA, then what I said is valid. :-)
> But in the case you put forth, use of a program that is restricted in
> platform through technological means is not use of the program "as
> intended". I guess part of the question is "intended by whom?".
True, true. Again, hard to say.
> Taking Jeremy's suggested idea, I purchase a program that's developed to
> run on the Mac, but I don't have a Mac. If my intention is the important
> one and my intention is to run it on a Linux-based PC, would it be legal
> for me to reverse-engineer the program in order to recompile it to run on
> Linux? I would seriously doubt that, and I think a challenge on that
> basis would ultimately fail in court.
Sure. But this is the argument made by DeCSS authors: Nobody had a license
to play the legally-purchased DVD on a Linux machine, so they circumvented
the protection to make that possible. Of course, distributing a program that
not only played the disk but made it possible to copy it was the bigger
problem, I think. Makes it hard to separate out the different concerns in
the court cases.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!
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