On Fri, Dec 21, 2001 at 09:00:22PM +0100, Wim De Smet wrote:
Hi,
I'd like to draw some attention to a news message I read. It's on a bit of a free software unfriendly site (zdnet belgium).
http://www.zdnet.be/News.cfm?id=14276&mxp=27
It's in dutch, and gives some details about a new cd, that will be protected by cactus data shield technology. What's so bad about this, is that it's a propietary format that will only play on a specialised player in Windows. No mac or gnu/linux support. In my eyes this is extremely bad. The 'experiment' will be carried out in the US and off course the program etc. fall under DMCA. I think this is a good example of the reasons why DMCA should be abolished. If more record companies go this way, eventually we will be unable to buy cd's anymore.
I'm going to issue a lot of things in this mail (I'm to lazy to split them :-) ).
First for the non-dutch speakers under us, http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-8225543.html is almost the same article but in english. It doesn't look very nice. :(
Second I want to know if cracking this is illegal in Europe (especially in The Netherlands as I live there). If not, IMHO we should make a GPL'd GNU/Linux to fight for our freedom. I'm going to the CCC Congress (http://www.ccc.de/congress/2001), it would be a nice project to do it their (I will bring my own computer with me). Does somebody know if these CDs are available in Europe?
If there are people going to the congress, it would be nice to meet other free software supporters. Just mail me if you want to meet me there. :)
Also for all dutch and belgic people here: What about setting up a FSF Benelux? AFAIK there doesn't exist anything like that (At least not here in The Netherlands, there is only some open source thing. I don't know about Belgium).
Okay that was it. :)
Jeroen Dekkers