Jolt Country

This should probably go into the politics base, but whatever, it's technology related and I don't expect anyone is going to debate me here when I say this isn't a good thing.

http://www.copyright.gov/1201/

Basically, it's legal for you to break copy protection if you:
-are a college professor, and need to show copyrighted material for your journalism class
-are blind, and the ebook you get makes it impossible for screenreader software to interface with it
-you have a game that cannot be played on either the hardware you own or any hardware you can easily get ahold of
-you are trying to let people know of technical errors or risks associated with the DRM scheme itself
-I don't quite get what the other two are about.

Keep in mind, this only counts if you own the work in quesiton. So if you *own* a copy of Galaga, and your arcade machine broke, then you can just go ahead and emulate. But I can't go downloading cracked ebooks willy-nilly just because i"m blind (Well, I *can*, but that's this whole other thing.) APparently the first four of hte article were in effect in 2003--which kind of fuckz0rs the speech I gave in my public speaking class about this last year, but whatever. They're renewed until 2009 now, as well as a couple of new ones. Good times.

Oh, here's a nice opinion piece!

Some worthless nobody from the EFF wrote:Unfortunately, just as we predicted, all the proposed exemptions that would benefit consumers were denied (space-shifting, region coding, backing up DVDs). So, while we're pleased that film professors, archivists, cellphone recyclers, and security researchers were able to successfully navigate the exemption process, it appears that digital consumers still have no choice but to get Congress to amend the DMCA.

Well of course they didn't, because YOU never even submitted the proposal and argued with them about it. I mean, dont' get me wrong, tehy wouldn't have listened either way, but Jesus Christ, if you're going to bitch about things not being changed you could at least try to change them first. That's okay though, you can go on saying that people who like to play old games aren't digital consumers. Did you see how they deliberately excluded the plind from that list up there? What's up with that?

I am enjoying a light snack!