On Wed, 6 Mar 2002 13:22:22 -0500, Charles Shannon Hendrix <shannon@widomaker.com> wrote:
>
>Also, if other countries do not adopt this, then how will you move
>personal and scientific media overseas?  I also wonder what happens to
>new versions of existing digital media software, or new creations even
>outside of the commercial realm.  It seems there is a valid case for
>restricting that too.
>
>Everything the Microsoftian industry does seems to be orthagonal to the
>very purpose of computation and the resulting technologies.

I'm not usually one to defend Microsoft, but in this case they are not
the villans here.  As far as I know (please feel free to correct me if
you have information to the contrary), they are not pushing SSSCA nor
are they in favor of it.  They would prefer that Digital Rights
Management be done by the OS (their OS, of course), not by the hardware.

The whole SSSCA business is entirely the brainchild of the entertainment
cartels, and this is an important distinction.  They are too rich and
powerful for the computer industry to defy directly, but the computer
industry itself has little to gain from the SSSCA, since its customers
aren't demanding it.  So, IBM, Intel, Dell, etc., will sing the SSSCA
fight song publicly, but you can bet that if they have the opportunity
to bury it, they will.

However, if the unthinkable happens and SSSCA becomes law, then NetBSD
can only benefit, since all those old PCs, Macs, Suns, Vaxen, etc., will
become REALLY useful all of a sudden.

NetBSD.  Forward thinking... and backward compatible!

--Mirian