Local Media and DVD Stuff..

[Mike Hicks <hick0088@tc.umn.edu>]

Chris McKinley wrote:
> 
> Userfriendly posted a link to a page with a petition against the treatment
> of Jon Johansen, the Norwegian teen who helped reverse engineer the DVD
> read protocols.  The petition can be found at:
> 
> http://linuxguiden.linpro.no/protesteng.php

Thanks for posting that.  I was going to do that earlier, but I forgot..

I apologize in advance if people are getting annoyed at me talking about
this or anything else lately..  For some reason, the whole DVD mess has
caused me to write more e-mail than normal.  However, I'm interested if
anyone is interested in presenting some information about this story to
the news media in the area, to put some real information into the
traditional media (I'd almost advocate hijacking the AP wire in this
case..)  

90% of the stories on this subject have been hidden away on online
publications and tech journals.  The best articles are only being read
by the people who already believe in what is being written.  This same
problem has faced ethnic and political groups in the past.  I know that
the German population went to great effort to defend themselves in the
media against the anti-German sentiment that was rampant during World
War I.  Unfortunately, they wrote German articles in German newspapers
distributed to German communities.

I think I'll save my "The Media is a Rotten Piece of Elephant Dung"
speech for later and see if anyone is interested in coordinating with me
to put together some fact-filled, yet easy-to-understand information
about the DVD mess and its relationship with intellectual property,
copyright, etc..
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 [ Mike Hicks | http://umn.edu/~hick0088/ | mailto:hick0088@umn.edu ]