Hi,

On 8 Sep 2001, at 17:23, Wolfgang Rupprecht wrote:
> It would really piss me off if the RIAA in an attempt to play
> anti-napster games were to two things I care about 1) a free and open
> OS and 2) CD playing tools that are far superior to the crap the
> stereo electronics manufacturers are putting out.

The music industries attempts to get such regulations in the 
european union did not work out this summer. In most european 
countries individuals have the right to make copies of copyrighted 
materials f=FCr their own use (and actually you pay for it - in many 
contries for every CD-R and other recordable media a certain 
amount of the price goes to the representatives of the industries, 
that is the music industry for CD-Rs, the print industry for copiers 
and so on. In Germany eg. they want a dollar or two for every GB 
of harddrivespace. This to compensate for the legal restriction of 
the copyright.). So you should find software for your needs outside 
the US until the EU and the US will "cooperate".

For the OS, IIRC the only OS with a built in mechanism to prevent 
copyright issues is WindowsXP (according to the MS press 
releases published here). I do not think any Unix can be conform to 
the SSSCA as such "security measures" must be included in the 
kernel and may not be removable - what to me sounds like "no user 
kernel compilation".

I think , at least in europe, it is time to act against the music 
industry. The last 15 years they allmost doubled the prices for an 
album while moving from LPs to the less quality CDs. The CD 
production and transportation cost are only a fraction of the cost for 
LPs, but instead of halving the prices, they doubled them. The big 
players in this industry do not only produces music related products, 
but also control the whole (global) distribution. That seems to be a 
market dominating ogliopoly to establish a disatvantage for the 
customers.

mike