[Info-vax] VMS License Generator

[Phillip Helbig---undress to reply]

In article <fg4FbdAV$Y2j at eisner.encompasserve.org>,
cornelius at eisner.decus.org (George Cornelius) writes: 

> > Right, it's a crime, plain and simple.
> 
> In most countries, perhaps.  Even, on the surface, in the U.S.
> 
> [BEGIN WELL OFF TOPIC REMARK]
> 
> There is, however, a constitutional guarantee of freedom of
> speech, 

Note: this post is not a direct reply to the quoted lines, but rather a 
general reply to various posts in this thread.

Precisely because I value free speech extremely highly I am highly 
critical of people abusing it, for example claiming that it is some sort 
of human right to be able to download the latest Lady Gaga song without 
paying for it.

In general, not everything involving communication (which to a large 
part is the internet) necessarily has anything to do with free speech.

> and many of us believe that certain provisions of, say,
> the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, run roughshod over that
> guarantee and might not in truth survive a constitutional
> challenge.

If so, then a court should rule that it is unconstitutional.  I think 
that in such cases it is better to target the offending parts, rather 
than throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  It is the "correct" 
thing to do and has the added advantage that it is more likely to 
succeed.

> It's one thing to say you cannot copy a protected
> work; it's another to claim you cannot publish a means by which
> copyright protection can be circumvented.

True, they are different, but depending on laws and court decisions, 
both might be illegal.  It is one thing to kill a person and another to 
pay someone to do so, but that does not mean that both cannot be illegal 
just because they are different.

Just to be clear: in this case, we are not talking about a copyright 
violation, but rather something else.