Tor Sigurdsson wrote:
Hey-hey... hello - a moment here....
You guys are completely forgetting ( as is to be expected of americans ;) that US law does NOT - I repeat - NOT tell people in other parts of the world what to do. Never ! The US is NOT all of the world, and neither is the US government a world government. - That aside, now for the REAL issue...
The DMCA is valid in the US.
The MPAA has "jurisdiction" in the US.
In Iceland ( for example, as I live there so I happen to know the law a bit ) you can NOT patent:
Formulae
Methods
or any other mathematical work of creative mind.
But I'd expect that Microsoft has the same stranglehold on the software market in Rekjavik that it does in Roanoke, and they've been getting better and better at enforcing their intellectual property claims in countries outside the USA. And for better or worse, the US Federal government has enormous influence on standards, including those for software, throughout the world just because of the huge volume of its purchases. Even though you live in Iceland, there's plenty of reason for you to root for a US FIPS as I suggested. It's hardly unheard of for the citizens of one country to have a strong interest in particular political issues within another country. Paul