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

["D. C. Sessions" <dvd(at)lumbercartel.com>]

On Monday 05 November 2001 10:49, you wrote:
> > > 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.  

Yes, it matters.  You can't separate the two.  Script files are a good
example, but even your case of digital photography turns out to
work in my direction.  Many of the more sophisticated visual compression
algorithms are essentially mini-languages which act as code to render
a picture.  XML graphics formats, for instance, are often really drawing
lists -- sequences of "do this, then do that" commands.

So it's not even hypothetical that a "movie" disk would actually be a
program for rendering the movie in real time.

> 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.  

-- 
| I'm old enough that I don't have to pretend to be grown up.|
+----------- D. C. Sessions <dcs@lumbercartel.com> ----------+