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This week a landmark verdict was handed down to RealNetworks with deep implications for fair use and personal property in America. The ruling wasn't about filesharing, piracy, or malicious computer use. Rather, it was fight over whether users should be able to make copies of digital content that they legal own. And in a precedent-setting decision, the media companies beat a small software vendor and fair use advocates and laid down an imposing decision -- copying DVDs that you own is illegal.
Originally posted by srsrecords
Oh, lovely, a typically insane and inane response from the establishment
The first question given in the video clip below is why music piracy should be addressed in the first place. A respondent replies that because it "affects the quality of life in a DA’s district" and that "it’s a link to a lot of other crimes." According to her it can be used to "get into a drug house that you couldn’t get in before" and that it can even "have links to terrorists organizations for those Federal prosecutors out there." Just when you though they’d completely lost it, she then says that some people even sell guns and drugs with bootleg CDs. I know I’ve never heard of a "Pearl Jam & Pot special" and I’m sure that I’m not alone.
The other person on the panel even furthers these incredulous claims with his story of how in some places people actually ask if "’Would you like it WITH or WITHOUT?’ The ‘with’ is a CD enclosing a piece of crack or whatever the case may be."