On Sun, 21 October 2001, David Johnson wrote:
> On Sunday 21 October 2001 05:46 pm, email@greglondon.com wrote:

> > Bob's Music Conglomeration starts releasing music as
> > an object file. The license says "you can only link this
> > music/object file with software licensed by Bob".
> > And Bob's player is a monolithic hulk of software that
> > enforces a pay per play system, along with forced user
> > registration, and reports back to Bob on user playing habits, etc.
> >
> > Alice makes a driver that play's Bob's music on Linux,
> > and puts it on the web. Bob sicks his lawyers on Alice,
> 
> Wow, sounds just like DVDs! You can only play DVDs on authorized players. Any 
> attempt to make your own DVD player will cause the Norwegian police to come 
> arrest you.

Yeah, but that kind of DVD stuff is enforced by the "anti-circumvention" crap
of the WIPO treaty and the DMCA law, isn't it?  (All those who recieved
campaign contributions from the entertainment industry, please place
your vote here. Yes, I'm sure this is the intent of democratic representation.
Would a few more dollars help ease your conscience? Thank you senator.)

In the above example, Bob only needs to invoke good, old-fashioned,
copyright law. Derived works is reserved to the author, linking is a
derived work, so only Bob's software can link in with all of Bob's
sound files. you don't need WIPO for this one.

Greg




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