Re: [dvd-discuss] Re: The Grounds for Appeal

["John Zulauf" <johnzu(at)ia.nsc.com>]

Robert,

as part of my conference last week I had extensive conversations with
one of the corporate counsels for a major media company.  He absolutely
and honestly doesn't believe that Johansen was trying to enable a Linux
player.  "I don't believe that for a second..." was the quote.  Even
after I mentioned that I had been in contact with him through an
internet group (this one, though I didn't tell him that) and that he had
confirmed that the Linux player was his goal, he was unshakeable in his
belief.  I'm getting the real sense that the lawyers (and the courts as
they are derived from these lawyers) are projecting their own cultural
bias to the actions of Open Source coders (evil hackers) -- essentially
they wouldn't ever do stuff like this, and they don't understand the
passion that Open Source and Linux evoke...

The other sense I got from my conversation with him was the sense of
"groupthink" going on inside the media companies.  Even with the the
doubts about the impossible of absolute end-to-end protection (and the
voices from the panelists that it was technically impossible) -- nobody
wants to tell senior managment, that their dreams of "green cloud"
(raining money) business models just won't hold up.  That at $1.50 per
song that is locked to 1 PC nobody is going to pay -- that copy
protected CD's simply *create* a demand for free music (and lose the
goodwill of the people who would otherwise say "get your own ****
paper".


JJ, 

If you want I can send you this gentlemen's email address offlist.

.002

"Robert S. Thau" wrote:
> 
> Bryan Taylor writes:
>  > I couldn't agree with you more on this. I think the key point for the next
>  > phase is to hammer the distinctions between these three concepts:
>  >
>  > 1. pure speech expressing functional ideas
>  > 2. "functionality" = a device capable of allowing a human to perform a task
>  > 3. conduct = the actual act of exercising a device
> 
> Errrmmm... I may be speaking out of turn here, not having reviewed the
> opinion in detail yet, but a common reaction has been that the judges
> chose their conclusions first, and then shaped their logic to fit ---
> and weren't particularly troubled when they had to stretch that logic
> awfully thin to cover the facts.
> 
> If that's anywhere near the mark, then the key point that needs to be
> hammered home would be an alternative view of the facts --- perhaps
> beginning by pointing out that Johansen was trying not to pirate any
> videos, but simply to build a DVD player, and that testimony was not
> contradicted by anyone at trial...
> 
> rst