Message-Id: <5.0.2.1.2.20001226142546.02425e60@pop.rahul.net> Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2000 14:48:33 -0800 From: "Christopher D. Reimer" <creimer@rahul.net> Subject: Re: [SLE] Copy protection into harddisks. At 05:59 AM 12/26/2000, Lewis E. Wolfgang wrote:

Hi Chris,

I agree that this hair-brained scheme will probably die from lack of market acceptance, but what about the DMCA in the US? The Digital Millennium Copyright Act outlaws unauthorized decryption. You might be breaking the law by using an unauthorized operating system on your own hard disk!

Regards, Lew Wolfgang

I wasn't aware of DMCA and I'm not sure what the full impact could be from that law. I'm thinking that if the hard drive encryption scheme does become widely accepted by government and corporate agencies with high security needs, a legal OSS option will be needed for the Enterprise versions of Linux distributions. I'm making a broad assumption that the company that created this technology will not be stupid enough to deny a legal OSS version since they wouldn't be able to charge a license fee. Then again, this may be a stupid encryption scheme that they might charge large amounts of money for and no one but the government can afford it. Christopher Reimer creimer's FPS Design & Portfolio http://www.rahul.net/creimer/