Quote Originally Posted by SlumpBuster
Actually, the illegality of programs used to defeat DRM is more than just a "personal position." It is also the position of the U.S. Congress, the Office of the President, the FBI, the US Customs, the US Postmaster, and the US Attorney General. Take your spam elsewhere.
If a law is unjust, isn't it our patriotic duty to disobbey it? Additionally, haven't "the U.S. Congress, the Office of the President, and the FBI" broken quite a few laws in the last decade (from extarordinary rendition to illegal wiretaps to starting wars)? What makes that OK, but ripping a legally owned music track not OK? The laws that you refer to are only enforceable in this country because the RIAA had the money to buy off the votes to get the DMCA passed in the first place. This did not happen to the same degree in other countries. If the whole world is less beholden to the RIAA, why do we feel so self-righteous to claim that our laws trump theirs? Maybe the DMCA went too far.

For example, if you were arrested for charging a cover charge at the door to watch the pay-per-view Tyson fight on your new 60" plasma tv, should you serve the maximum US jail sentence or be made to just pay a small fine as they do in France? If it was the next decade of your life on the line, I'm sure you'd opt for the French solution, regardless of what you may think of their cheese. And this becomes pretty serious when your crime is equated to terrorism. Maybe we should interrogate you filthy bootleggers by waterboarding to see who else might be involved. Who knows, we could find out all kinds of other information like who was speeding on the way home last night, who "borrowed" a couple of pens from the office, and who was involved in the office pool before the big game last week. Pretty soon, we'll be arresting and waterboarding all you filthy criminals.

Oh, so you don't do that, huh? Well what if it was your 15 yr. old daughter who did? You'd still be on the hook for it. There is a reason why we value our civil liberties, fair use, and privacy in our homes. Sometimes it is to bend the law to make life a little more bearable. Just like we don't want to know what you do in your bedroom, we also don't want to know if it involves a little bootlegged music. If no one gets hurt, why do we equate such crimes with much more heinous ones?

Snoop was careful to refer specifically to "people that buy legal music." For most of us who abide by the law most of the time, DRM is a pain-in-the-a**, and only makes the enjoyment of music that much harder. To proclaim that one does not partake in crime as loosely defined as in the DMCA, is like mounting a slingshot on the porch of a glass house. To be satisfied that the DMCA is the law of the land is just a convenience of priviledge and wealth. If we're going to move the debate from a "personal issue" to a universal issue, then why stop at the borders of the US?