[free-sklyarov] Headline juxtaposition

alfee cube sisgeek at yahoo.com
Tue Aug 7 12:02:31 PDT 2001


in my thinking there is a grand canyon between dicta
saying you can restrict a vcr (the hon henry hyde -il
attempts to justify restrictions on speech by
analogizing to hardware restrictions, also) and
application of that logic to restricting code writing
(speech).

colleen pouilot, Adobe's general counsel articulates
beautifully the rationale for "strange contributory
theories" when saying during an npr interview  -
frankly we did not think we could get any money out of
a russian company.

however, in america, restricting one person's speech
because effective remedies against another person are
unavailable never has been the law and never can be
the law!

although, the gun ruling raised second amendment
issues it did truncate efforts to extend remedies
against one class of persons (producers of guns) for
the behavior of another class of persons (users of
guns)... and this is definitely positive!! (and guns
are definitely hardware:)



--- Seth David Schoen <schoen at loyalty.org> wrote:
> Christopher R. Maden writes:
> 
> > Reading the NandO Times (<URL:
> http://www.nando.net/ >), I found it 
> > interesting that Dmitry's bail release was right
> next to "Gunmaker not 
> > liable for use of weapons in 1993 shootings,
> California court rules".  The 
> > analogy between the liability of a gun
> manufacturer for illegal uses, and 
> > the liability of AEBPR's author for potential
> illegal uses, seems obvious.
> 
> I saw mention of this juxtaposition on dvd-discuss.
> 
> The only trouble is that there was explicit
> legislation to create
> liability for manufacturers of circumvention
> technology.  There's no
> explicit legislation (in California) to create
> liability for
> manufacturers of guns.
> 
> This is the exact reason why the nice precedent in
> _Universal v. Sony_
> may not help DMCA defendants.  The Court there held
> that _existing law_
> provided no liability for manufacturers of VCRs, so
> movie studios'
> attempts to make them illegal under various strange
> contributory _____
> theories failed.  But apparently the Court also
> suggested in dicta
> that Congress _could_ outlaw VCRs, if it wanted to,
> and there wouldn't
> necessarily be anything wrong with legislation that
> did that.
> 
> This sort of thing is why you hear the copyright
> industries being
> really strong on "deferring to the will of
> Congress".  That way when
> you say "a court held similar behavior legal in
> 1984!" or whatever,
> they can say "yes, it wasn't illegal then, but it is
> now".
> 
> -- 
> Seth David Schoen <schoen at loyalty.org>  | Lending,
> printing, copying, giving
> Temp.  http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/  | and
> text-to-speech are permissions
> down:  http://www.loyalty.org/   (CAF)  | enabled by
> the publisher.  -- Adobe
>    I'm looking for work: 
> http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/resume.html
> 
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