Subject URL: Fair Use Laws

It's perfectly legal to copy a CD you own so you can use it at work. It's been proven in court... but record companies don't like it. The lawer rant above asks for the fair use laws to be reaffirmed to prevent the coming money grab carnage.

Mostly concerns DMCA and VHS copying... something the TV content providers are doing their best to stop. I read today that the only reason Sony won their case back when VHS first came out was that they could not control what people did with their new device, and so the fair-use timeshifting law came into place.

But now we have the technology to control what you do with devices.

Subject URL: The End Of The PC

The rant linked to above argues that it won't be long before the multipurpose Personal Computer is hard to come by. Apparently PC producers are simply not making any money, and are looking toward purpose specific device production (MP3 CD Players, Web TVs etc.).

This rant sprang from a discussion of new Hard Disk copyprotection standard being thrown about the industry. He states it's far simplier to implement copy protection if you own the devices that play the content. Many new MP3 players support copy protection in WMA format, preventing transfer of files, burning of files to CD etc.

Microsoft has always been looking at converting the PC into a copy protected device you can't do anything with unless they say so. It's far easier to do this if you made the device...

I personally can't see the PC going anywhere soon... but the article infers we may not have a choice. But it's good the Napster case happened when it did. More people will be angry by such changes than probably would have before.