Book People Archive

"...the assumption that we are all copyright outlaws"



http://www.law.com/cgi-bin/nwlink.cgi?ACG=ZZZ4IB5MLKC

Thieves R Us

 Computer makers are building equipment on the
 assumption that we are all copyright outlaws

 Mike Godwin
 The American Lawyer
 April 18, 2001



 Every year or two I upgrade to a newer, faster
 Mac laptop, and this means I go through a
 now-familiar ritual of hooking up the new
 machine to the old one through a cable or local
 area network and copying everything --
 software, data (including my MP3 music
 collection), and settings -- to the new
 machine. So you can imagine my surprise and
 horror when I heard reports recently that a new
 standard for consumer hard drives would make
 this kind of copying difficult or maybe even
 impossible.

 The reports may have been at least partially
 wrong, as it turns out. But I think they raise
 important issues, and ones we ought to be
 thinking about now.

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