Bill C-61, and 'Electronic Locks'

[epemac]

In the process of mailing a letter to my area's member of parliament, and I need a little help making my point. What are some 'digital locks' that linux users have to work around on an everyday basis, due to our morals about open source software? Mission-critical things that our ability to work is dependent on? There must be some.

[original_jamingrit]

A good example might be libdvdcss. libdvdcss does actually violate some copyright laws, just because of the same guys who made that damn hex key ;-). But reasonably, it ought to be something that people can use, if they've bought a DVD for themselves. Any other region-based encrypted media works too.

Also, the definition of digital locks is left so broad, that even just the 'autorun.exe' designed for windows might could possibly be declared a digital lock mechanism. autorun.exe will not be automatically run by linux or mac users, or even windows users that have that turned off.

those are the only decent examples I can think of right now.

[Murrquan]

Restricted codecs.

Trouble obtaining restricted codecs legally, even if you want to. I can get a free, legal .mp3 codec from Fluendo, but it only works with the gstreamer engine, and Amarok can't use that.

IE-only websites, and Flash not rendering properly in Firefox ...

Today I tried to put things up on eBay, and it wouldn't let me make them available to international sellers because that part of the sales form wouldn't load. I had to boot into Windows for it.

I'm sure there are others.

Perhaps you could shed some light on exactly what you are doing? I gather it has something to do with a proposed Canadian (British? Australian?) law.

[saulgoode]

A good example might be libdvdcss. libdvdcss does actually violate some copyright laws, ...

This has never been upheld in the courts. Perhaps you should qualify your statement as being your opinion, not a legal certainty.

-------------------------

I recently had to install Windows on my machine (Win98 under VirtualBox) in order to be able to use Stamps.com to purchase postage online. Hopefully, a client will be provided in the future for non-MS OSes.