[luau] News - Bruce Perens plans on-stage DMCA violation

Warren Togami warren at togami.com
Fri Jul 26 01:07:00 PDT 2002


Open Source Software advocate Bruce Perens plans to violate the DMCA on
stage at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention in San Diego on Friday.  While
he will be breaking the law, he probably wont be arrested because of his
high profile status.  There would be a high likelihood that he would win the
court battle (after appeals) and thus set a precedent invalidating the DMCA
in the Supreme Court.

Last year Russian programmer Dmitri Skylarov was arrested while visiting
America for writing software in Russia that is legal under Russian law.
Adobe took offense to his actions and had him arrested under the DMCA.  He
was arrested mainly because those in power thought that the American public
wouldn't be outraged because he is a foreign Russian (lingering Cold War
anger) hacker (evil person who breaks into computers).

Ironically, if Bruce Perens is NOT arrested after this announced DMCA
violation does this not clearly show that America is the land of selective
prosection based upon your economic and social status?

http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/07/23/020723hnperens.xml






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