Open-source guru backs off DVD hack

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act or DMCA is starting to have success. More and more we read messages of people who don’t even want to share their knowledge anymore because they are afraid of this new act. Or they are forbidden to inform the public by their company like the following man:

As part of his speech, Perens had planned to show the audience how to modify a DVD player to play time-zone-restricted European DVDs that are designed to not work in U.S. players. However, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) prohibits making available information on how to circumvent copyright controls. Perens’ speech will be preceded by one from Martin Fink, his manager at HP, who will explain why the company was uncomfortable with what Perens had originally planned. Perens said he had no intention of violating copyrights–rather, he just wanted to view “AI,” “Gladiator” and other DVDs he had bought while in Europe.

Why aren’t we allowed to circumvent these stupid DVD player controls? They were only invented so that we couldn’t see movies that were already on DVD somewhere else and thus to let Hollywood make even more money. But Bruce Perens hasn’t the money to sponsor those big election campaigns. Read the entire story here. If you do, don’t forget to look at the last paragraph.

Source: ZDNet