Re: [dvd-discuss] UK ruling against Playstation mods

["Michael A Rolenz" <Michael.A.Rolenz(at)aero.org>]

One aspect of this that is particularly disturbing to anyone of a 
conservative nature it the notion that despite hundreds of years of 
practice, the court appears to be ruling that personal property IS NOT. 
The notion that one licenses property in the market place is counter to 
hundreds of years of practice, common law, and even what the fictional 
"rational man" believes even when falling down drunk."Intellectual 
property" is used to create personal property. You get a LIMITED monopoly 
the former  that but I have an UNLIMITED monopoly on my personal property. 
Under the DMCA, aspects of "intellectual property" (e.g., first sale, 
public domain) and personal property (e.g., I do with it was I choose 
including reverse engineeering it.) are distorted.

BTW - Here's a gedanken experiment. If I buy a book, there's nothing to 
stop me from writing in the margin. Now I am altering the presentation of 
the authors works aren't I (and if I sell the book it winds up in the 
market place ALTERED.). I can write counter arguments.  I can take 
quotations and annotate them and even paste them into the book. NOW let's 
take our playstations or Aibo's. The software is nothing more than 
copyrighted material <defer any argument to the contrary for now> with no 
special prevliges beyond any other copyright material. The fact that to 
access that material I have to use a playstation or an Aibo or to alter it 
requires more than a pen, sticky tape, and paper is really irrelevant. 
That is merely the nature of the medium the material has been made 
available.  So what's the difference here? Nothing that I can see. Now if 
I publish the copyright material that might be one thing but If I say - 
take your copy of it, put it into slot X, plug in cable Y, run annotation 
program Z and now pull it out of the slot and you have a identical copy of 
my annotations..So what's so special about a playstation or an Aibo?




"John Zulauf" <johnzu@ia.nsc.com>
Sent by: owner-dvd-discuss@eon.law.harvard.edu
01/24/02 07:59 AM
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        Subject:        Re: [dvd-discuss] UK ruling against Playstation mods




Andy Oram wrote:
> 
> Thanks for the pointer.One excerpt:
> 
> Judge Jacob stated that Sony licensed games for the territory that they 
were
> issued, the licensing of these games did not allow for their use in 
other
> territories, therefore whether they were imported for private and 
domestic
> use by personal purchase for instance via the internet, or purchased 
abroad
> on holiday, they were not allowed by Sony to be played outside of the
> licensed territory, this argument should be upheld.
> 
> So any restriction put by any company in any license can serve as the 
excuse
> for enforcing a ban on circumvention.

Doesn't this conflict with the recent anti-EULA decision w.r.t. Adobe. 
If an explicitly click-through license isn't binding how can an implicit
-- "you can't carry this home in your suitcase" because our player won't
let you binding.

Is code now more powerful that contract law?

.002