Re: It's legal to crack Apple II copy protection

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

Andy McFadden wrote:

>The DMCA is, simply, the victory of corporate money over individual rights.

Agreed--and one which will almost certainly be reversed as the
perspective of time makes its nature clearer.

>It's nice that the Librarian of Congress threw the Apple II community a
>bone and lets us crack the games to preserve them.  The absence of anyone
>with money protesting the idea might have had something to do with it.

I suspect it also has something to do with the fact that there are active
archiving groups (not hobbyists) who are attempting to preserve the
legacy of the beginning of the computer age for history.  They have
been quite lucid about the risks of permanent loss of uncopyable
material as media decays or becomes otherwise unreadable.

As we know, the only persistent bits are bits that are continually
re-copied onto newer media to keep up with technology evolution.
Copy protection prevents this preservative act, and therefore,
without circumvention, dooms the protected bits to oblivion.

The issue of who can access the preserved information, and how
much, and for what purpose can all be worked out in time, but
the bits must be preserved now, or forever hold your peace.

(See, for example:  http://www.archive.org/ )

-michael

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