[Free-sklyarov-uk] Adobe's "Dark Age" and the DMCA's international scope.

[Julian T. J. Midgley]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2001 12:08:46 -0400 (EDT)
From: C. Scott Ananian <cananian at lesser-magoo.lcs.mit.edu>

This short note:
   http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/21.59.html#subj4
reports on backwards compatibility failures with Acrobat reader.
Dare we entrust our books to a format which a) we can't later read, and
b) we can't translate to readable formats?  The Dark Ages weren't "dark"
because nothing of note happened; they're dark because *no records of the
period have survived*.

Here:
  http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/21.62.html#subj7
you'll note that "just staying out of the U.S. won't necessarily" keep you
out of the DMCA's reach.  Two entries further down, we get this great
quote from the CEO of Time Warner:

 A typical book, for example--the old-fashioned kind--finds its way to
 five or six readers beyond the original purchaser, according to Laurence
 Kirshbaum, CEO of Time Warner's trade-publishing arm.  "One of the
 attractions of electronic publishing," he says, is the ability to "cut
 down on this pass-along."

Bill Weitze responded as follows:

 This "loaning", as its practitioners call it, is indeed most subversive.
 There are even institutions, called "libraries", which carry on this sort
 of thing in a wholesale fashion.  This was started by a very dangerous
 individual named Franklin; maybe Mr. Kirshbaum should sue him.

Great stuff!!