On Thursday 24 October 2002 14:23, Curtis Rey wrote: It relates to civll disobedience and enforcement on a large scale. The point was that if a law is viewed as unreasonable that enforcement becomes an issue. In Germany the populus has accepted that everyone should and will have insurance, based on standing law. Therefore, the agencies in place to enforce these laws and the populus both find that compliance and enforcement to be reasonable. So, in Germany, you don't have insurance you have your license plates confiscated and you drive at your own risk. In California, with a population of 60 million, the state does not track who does and does not have insurance (unless, as I said you have an incident and the state becomes aware of it). The anology is that in the U.S. with millions of people using downloading services for music, movies, and whatever. Who will enforce compliance with any laws that the legislature passes concerning access to these programs? What agency is going to collect the list of the millions of violators and then round them up for arrest or citations with mandatory court appearances? Can you imagine the tremendous amount of back logs in the amount of the court dockets to handle these on a daily basis - the amount is staggering. A law only works if a substantial amount of the populus adhere to it. Who will monitor all those millions of computers to see if they have deCSS illegally installed/enabled on their system? This is the real push of efforts such as Palladium. You don't have to monitor it, it monitors it's self. The system firmware has built in "protection" against the use of anything that is not pre-approved by the industry, or moreover, the state. This all revolves around having people pay for the use of any media. It's not enough that I pay for the hardware and software to run DVD's on my computer and then use a DVD I bought. Is it asking to much to be "allowed" to play a DVD in either my dedicated DVD player hooked up to my TV or to view it on my PC? The same holds true for CD music and mp3's. I just got back from two weeks in Tokyo. There are no signs of this sort of industry behavior their. In the Akihabara district (which is a virtual computer mecca for consumers) their is loads and loads of DVD drives, Video cards not seen in the U.S. Gigabyte, Asus, etc... Mobo's that have standard features and board configuration not common in the U.S. What's to stop me from having my Father in Law from shipping me a Mobo from Tokyo, the customs department - Ha?! What's to stop me from getting any other piece of hardware that doesn't have Pallidium in it? What's to stop my from getting any software in English formats, such an English OS or any other software sent from Tokyo. I see a potentail for a mass black market. And after I build my illegal hardware and install my illegal software who's going to bust me. I don't run a DNS or server butI can setup a gateway computer if my ISP checks for Palladium/non-DMCA approved devices to route internet access to my illegal computer. I will most likely be able to find cracks/work-arouunds if my gateway's default is not to commicate with my illegal computer - and on and on and on. So, like the non-compliance issue related to mandatory presentation of "proof of insurance" in California, which still has laws stating that having insurance in mandatory. They just can't check for it when they pull you over for speeding or failure to stop citation. Other than that, I only have to be worry about not having auto insurance when I need it - aka getting into an accident and not having coverage. Therefore, my argument is not about insurance, it's about compliance and means of enforcement. I don't know of any FBI local office that will be anywhere near pleased or enthusiastic about running around busting 22 year old college students for DL'ing music or local juvinial officers busting 15 year olds for the same. And I can see the judges faces as they are drowning in dockets for trail on these "offenses". Ya, the lawers like this sort of stuff because they see all the money they can make defending people. The RIAA and Hollywood like this stuff because the think they will get more money from securing unauthorized (as they deem it) us of their product. M$ likes it because because it furthers their efforts to push the "sofftware as a service" market strategy. But do you think the consumers will like it? Especially when they find out that those in Europe, South America, Asia, etc.. don't have to put up with this crap. I personally don't think so. Therefore, regardless of the validity of the law about checking for proof of insurance, it proved unfeasible from a logistical and compliance stand point. The same looks to be the case with so-called copy protection. I just don't think it's going to sell and someone will find away around it. Then what you end up with is a nation of citizen-criminals. And you can't jail everyone. I'm not saying that not carrying auto insurance is o'k. I'm not saying that the government doesn't have the right to mandate that drivers have auto insurance. I'm say that laws only work when populations are willing to abide by them. Just like many other laws that are on the books but are essentially paper tigers. Once in a while the courts will prosecute someone on an absurd or outdated law that they generally ignore and don't inforce, but will pull someone before the judge to make an example of them. The same holds true for many laws. I'm not arguing about the rightness or wrongness of any particular law. I stating that if people find DRM/DMCA laws unreasonable one of two things will happen. A) they will find a way en-mass to circumvent or ignore it. and/or B) as in the case of PCs they will cause a drop in sales which in turn will force the large manufactures to lobby and campaign for the laws to be changed. The ones that really suffer are the researchers because thay risk the biggest attention in showing flaws or exploits that might be used to write better code. But in doing so the break the law and they're a small enough group to where a significant number can be punished and the rest will back off for fear of being punished themselves. Cheers, Curtis