Re: Would Copy II+ be illegal today

[Greg Weston <gwestonREMOVE@CAPSattbi.com>]

In article <Sisko-1405022116150001@12-248-65-251.client.attbi.com>,
SlickRCBD <Sisko@Celestial.Temple.org> wrote:

> I was just chatting with some people about how the movie industry sued
> when the crack for their DVD copy protection was released to the public
> (de-CSS). Under some law passed in the last 10 years it was illegal to do
> so.
> 
> By that reasoning, would the old backup utilities Copy II Plus and
> Locksmith also be considered illegal programs to produce and use today?
> They were commercial programs that did esentially the same thing to 5.25"
> and 3.5" disks that the freeware de-CSS program did to DVDs.

They wouldn't, because they support a right that is explicitly provided
in current law. A major difference between executable software and
media is that a lossy copy of media is tolerable to the vast majority
of consumers. Given decent techniques and the wide variance of
rendering hardware (TVs and stereos) they may not even be able to tell
that they're experiencing an analog duplicate. A lossy copy of
executable code is non-functional.

G