Archive for May, 2005

Patry on the Anti-Bootlegging Statute

Tuesday, May 17th, 2005

William Patry, one of the drafters of 17 U.S.C. 1101 and 18 U.S.C. 2319A, the civil and criminal provisions, respectively, of the “anti-bootlegging” statute, has a post on his blog defending the constitutionality of these statutes, both of which have recently been ruled unconstitutional, one by a district court in California (Kiss Catalog v. Passport [...]

Broadcast Flag Struck Down!

Friday, May 6th, 2005

I awoke this morning and confirmed with FedEx and UPS that the last of my components for my broadcast-flag-busting MythTV PVR would arrive today. Then I learned that the American Library Association, EFF, and Public Knowledge had won their court case challenging the FCC’s authority to issue technology mandates such as the broadcast flag! Here’s [...]

To Whom Is Free Software Relevant?

Thursday, May 5th, 2005

r0ml writes,
Availability of the source code is probably only relevant to computer programmers. After all, if you aren’t a programmer, what would you do with source code? In which case, a freely copyable binary would be equivalent to freely copyable source code. The ability to do something with the source code (i.e. to create a [...]