If you don't, you may lose it all.

Imagine a world where you can't record tv.
Imagine a world where MS, AOL/TW, RIAA, MPAA, and Disney can all legaly spy on you and hack into your system.
Imagine a world where you couldn't lone a movie to a friend.
Imagine that you would be a criminal if you tryed to rip your "Super Audio CD" to ogg or mpc.

Now take a look at what is being passed/proposed in washinton.
On slashdot
CAFE project
Your "Privacy"

How can you do something about it? Do what I did today, and join the EFF.

.....
Yeah, and imagine a world where if you sneeze you get shot...
COME ON.
"Imagine a world where you couldn't lone a movie to a friend." Oh yeah? I will always be able to loan a movie to a friend, no matter what "rules" are. No one will prevent me.
Come ON, i'm getting sick of those descriptions of hell on earth.

"Imagine a world where MS, AOL/TW, RIAA, MPAA, and Disney can all legaly spy on you and hack into your system." WHAT? WHO CARES? They already do! WHO CARES if it's legal or not? They'll keep doing it anyway. You should learn how to protect yourself, that's the only solution.They can't spy on ME because i know how to protect myself well. If people don't know how, it's they're problem. Knowlage means power, period, don't got knowlage, don't have power, can cry about it all you want.

"Imagine that you would be a criminal if you tryed to rip your "Super Audio CD" to ogg or mpc." Or MP3 or AAC or WAV or AIFF or MP2 or MP1 or AU....
Yeah, the most repeated phrase in different forms of them all...Won't happen, sorry.
"Imagine a world where you can't record tv." You will always be able to record TV. Record ANYthing. Again, won't happen, sorry.

Such hell on earth will never exist. Even though the people who rule this world are corrupted lowlifes they're not that stupid, those kinds of extreme power will NEVER be at the hands of companies.

Join EFF? SURE, WHY NOT?!?! IT'S A GOOD THING TO DO SO. But stop insulting people's intelligence and cut it out with various hell on earth visions.

Mr. Deveco, I respect your opinions. And I am very glad that we have freedom to express our opinions. My opinions are slightly different from yours. Have a nice day anyway.

SK1,
Some of this has already come to pass.

*- The DCMA made it illegal to circumvent copy protection. So, even today, if you rip a Super Audio CD you are braking the law.
*- At this point if non-government peoples hack into your PC they are committing a crime, they can be punished in civil and in criminal court. Soon that may not be the case.
*- The FCC was used as an end-run around our elected officials to make all digital TV equipment have DRM built in.

I must say that you seem a bit aggressive, considering your ignorance.

You know how to upset a person !

"The DCMA made it illegal to circumvent copy protection. So, even today, if you rip a Super Audio CD you are braking the law."
I find it hard to believe that any member of this forum doesn't know that already! The "DMCA" (yes "DMCA" you "ignorant" man) is not taken seriously by endless people, many of the things determined by it are ridiculous and everybody knows it and interperete it in endless different ways.
Go have a good read at Doom9 about it (DMCA analysis).

"At this point if non-government peoples hack into your PC they are committing a crime, they can be punished in civil and in criminal court. Soon that may not be the case."
What is it with you and old news?! COME ON MAN!
Anyway, i'm 99.99% positive that a law granting them to legally hack into a person's system will not be passed.

"The FCC was used as an end-run around our elected officials to make all digital TV equipment have DRM built in."
I KNOW THAT. And i couldn't care less... It's their shit, they can do anything they want, whatever.. ANYTHING can and will be "cracked", -I- am ignorant??
"DRM" is pure bullshit.

"I must say that you seem a bit aggressive, considering your ignorance."
Actually no, i seem more than a bit aggressive.
Ignorant? No, but you are for calling me so without knowing at all what i do and do not know. And i assure you, there's nothing important you know that i don't.

Thanks deveco, I was not familar with the EFF. They sound pretty cool.

yep, sounds interesting. thanks for the heads-up deveco.

...and if you are worried about DRM chips:

www.opencores.org

My two 0.02€

Legality is kind of inconsequential.

Ripping a CD with a CD-ROM drive has always been technically a violation of copyright laws. Even using a standalone CD-recording stereo with "audio" CD-R's is a violation of copyrights, however in this case a loophole is provided by the gov't.

And copying music will never be impossible. If you can see or hear something, you CAN record it.

ManyFaces, thanks, that site has very interesting stuff.
And NeoRenegade, exactly...

No country can function if the majority of the population disregards the law.
When it happens, the laws must change.

The sky is falling, the sky is falling, the sky is falling...

Not taking laws seriously?


I wish I had your optimism.


Well, some of us are more concerned about what is legal and not only about what is possible.

"Not taking laws seriously?"
I am. But not laws that are not taking ME seriously, same goes for millions of people.

And i do care about legality. Hmm, what Annuka said sums it all.

The problem is that the majority doesn't care about this issues, so it's the influencial music-industry (I really like the word industry here) against (i) pirates (the majority would welcome actions against them) and (ii) a relatively small user group that cares about certain features like copy-ability.

Most users will be happy with their SACDP or DRM-Windows media player, and after they have been educated (compare SK's signature ), their support (or at least their inactivity) will (might?) lead to more company friendly laws.

->continuum
exactly!

But you forget one important point here. Although you say so nicely that anything you can see or hear, you can also copy... imagine that a new law is passed. This particular law forbids the production of devices able to circumvent copy protections. Making a burner/cd-rom/dvd-rom/etc without DRM chip would be illegal. So you wouldnt have the hardware to copy/record what you want. I think the situation would be similar to game consoles nowadays where the famous mod-chips come into play. But these illegal companies are permanently searched for and sued and disappear from the market one after another. No real solution. And you would have to upgrade every device you buy - extra work and additional expenses.

Don't forget "CBDTPA"...

What was it you called it again, "Land of the free..." ...?

Is it only me that feels like the pirates are on some kind of Rebel Alliance with us then? I know how what they're doing is supposed to be wrong, but every time I see a warez CD factory busted on the news I get mad at the COPS, not the pirates.

Ahem, back on topic...

SK1, would you prefer to be able to do what you want to do legally or illegally, albeit only breaking ill-enforced laws?

What is made into law COULD be enforced.

RE: 'what you can hear you can copy', do you want to live with analog line-out copying only?? And audible watermarks are already a reality--just look at DVD-A. Do you want this to get any worse??

Joe - what the (...) are these audible watermarks ?

There is an audible watermarking scheme in DVD-A. It doesn't prevent copying (since AFAIK there is no methodology for digitally copying DVD-As anyway and line-out copy protection has not been supported by any hardware so far) but this watermark could supposedly be used to identify the source from which a file was copied even after analog copying and lossy codec (e.g. mp3 encoding). I don't really know too much about this subject, there should be more knowledgeable people here.

So the DCMA, the CBDTPA, and the CIPA show that our elected officials are out of touch with us. In fact, we could argue that they are much more in touch with the entertainment industry and single-issue groups. I’m tired of it.

So, I’m angry and ready to put my money where my mouth is. I will buy a full membership (comes with t-shirt) to the EFF for at least one person. PM me about 300-500 words (anything you want), and I will pick the best one or two. This is open to everyone. The paragraphs become my property, but I will not repost them with any identifying info. I’m going on a trip for the next few days, and I will read PM’s when I get back.

Take a min to read a page or two and write a little something.

Well, I'm going to start reading tomarrow morning. So if any of you are considering, it might be time to write a Paragraph or two. I'm putting up $65, so it is not just a pat on the back.