From: 
To: lwn@lwn.net
Subject: Not seen at COMDEX
Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 11:25:25 -0800 (PST)


Forbidden to look

It is hard to see what is not there.  In this case, I am especially
blind, since I never go to a movie; or, to be more accurate, I hardly
ever go to a movie.

Perhaps I now need to do something I never do, which is take a
Congressman out out lunch; or, again to be more accurate, to visit a
Congressional aide.

What I did not see was a movie.

Once last year when I visited him, my friend Mycroft -- better known
as Charles Hannum of Netbsd -- was playing a movie on some hardware
very like mine -- a feature about the life of an anthropomorphic bug.
I was fascinated:   it is very hard to take ones eyes off moving figures.

At home, I normally turn off blinking cursors, animated text, and
anything else that moves.  The only thing that moves is my block
cursor, when I am typing.  So the movie caught my eye.

I thought, if I had the time, I should add audio and whatever else my
system needs, and watch movies myself.  But I never had the time.

Mycroft and I went our different ways.  I did not see him again until
Monday, at COMDEX, where he had a booth.  And at first I did not
notice what I did not see.  Although his hardware and software could
show a movie, and it would certainly catch the eyes of passers-by,
Mycroft was not showing any.

Forbidden!

Even if a movie studio wanted Mycroft to advertise a movie at COMDEX,
he could not legally do it.  It is now illegal to play a DVD movie on
the kind of hardware I have.

The software exists, of course.  But in the United States, if you run
your computer on software which you have the freedom to copy, study,
modify, and redistribute, it is forbidden to play a legally purchased
movie on legally purchased hardware,

Maybe it is time to see that congressional aide.

-- 
    Robert J. Chassell
    Free Software Foundation - GNU Project    http://www.gnu.org