Re: [dvd-discuss] Bunner wins DeCSS trade secret appeal

[Noah silva <nsilva(at)atari-source.com>]

> > be the same as a video tape.  The fact that it's represented with 0s and
> > 1s has little to do with it's function or purpose.
> 
> Is the "tape" in a virtualized Turing machine data or program?

the answer is: does it matter?  That's not a real world thing that will be
legislated.  

do you think a photo represtented by a JPG file on my computer should have
different legal status than one that I took with my camera and had
chemically printed on paper?  I don't.

Take a look at a GIF file, for example.  a Program (a real one, written in
machine code for a real processor) will read in the file and decode the
RLE and show it on the screen.  Sure the contents of the GIF file control
what gets put on the screen, but that doesn't make it a program in my
book.  

The color of the paint in the can might control what color the wall is
when I'm done painting it, but the bucket of paint is no more a program
because of that.  

Because there is an MPEG decoder chip doesn't make MPEG a program.  I have
an oven, that doesn't make potatoes a program.  The "Program" there is my
recipie for cooking them, and that is built into the MPEG decoder chip.

There are of course some grey areas, as there are with anything else (data
files with scripts).

 -- noah silva