Quote:
Originally Posted by Toadrax
How do you get them to arrest and charge you for it?
My laptop runs FreeBSD, but in order to watch DVDs that I legally purchased on my laptop that has a legally purchased DVD drive... I have to violate the DMCA.
The lovely DVD Forum does not provide a player to view DVDs on any open source platform such as Linux or BSD. In order to display the contents of the DVD on the screen, you have to run software that breaks the encryption (DeCSS) before it can play it on your screen.
In order to legally watch that DVD I would have to buy a copy of Microsoft Windows and install it on my laptop and use properly licensed software from the DVD Forum.
Legally, it would be better for me to download a copy of the movie over the Internet and watch it that way. Since I wouldn't be breaking any copy protection I wouldn't be in violation of that provision of the DMCA, I would just be liable for copyright infringement.
Gotta love it when the government sucks the wang of big businesses. That being said, no one has ever been arrested for having a laptop that can play movies... but things could change as long as bad laws like that are on the books.
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A better way to get rid of this particular law would probably be to petition your legislators to get rid of it, and get your friends to do the same.
If you really want to get arrested for something like that, you generally have to make a big show of breaking the law, like many did during the '60s. Civil disobedience was often the order of the day, although it often didn't go as well as intended. Many peaceful protests ended in unintended violence. Just something to consider.
But DMCA is not quite on the same order as civil rights, which is why you would probably have better results working on your lawmakers.