Letter to Editor: Response to Florian Mueller's Release re: "Anti-IP" [LWN.net]

Letter to Editor: Response to Florian Mueller's Release re: "Anti-IP"

Posted Aug 26, 2005 18:48 UTC (Fri) by jzbiciak (✭ supporter ✭, #5246)
In reply to: Letter to Editor: Response to Florian Mueller's Release re: "Anti-IP" by FlorianMueller
Parent article: Letter to Editor: Response to Florian Mueller's Release re: "Anti-IP"

Game play and authentication can be kept separate. Retaining the integrity of the client against hacking is a problem completely separate of the server. There are companies that specialize in that.

I disagree that "fair use" is a "copyright carve out." Copyright is an artificial right, and as I've said elsewhere, Fair Use defines one of its boundaries. It is thus an integral aspect of copyright. In other words, arguing from a position of Fair Use is arguing for copyright as it's currently defined.

Now, if you were to argue "fair use is wrong" and wish to change the definition of copyright, you'd be arguing against copyright as presently understood and you'd be arguing for a different, larger notion of copyright that does not currently exist in the American system.

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Letter to Editor: Response to Florian Mueller's Release re: "Anti-IP"

Posted Aug 26, 2005 18:54 UTC (Fri) by FlorianMueller (subscriber, #32048) [Link]

Even if we agree, at least for a moment, that arguing on the basis of a copyright carve-out is not identical to acting "against copyright", it's still not a self-sufficient argument for saying "the bnetd case is not against copyright". At the most, the reliance upon the Fair Use definition is neutral with respect to the concept of copyright.

The bnetd case as a whole is "against copyright" because, as the courts also concluded, bnetd can be, and has actually been, used to "circumvent copyright protection". That is the basis on which I called bnetd a "piracy-enabler" and made my statement in the press release that it looks like being "against copyright", not based on the details of the arguments that the EFF brought forward.

Letter to Editor: Response to Florian Mueller's Release re: "Anti-IP"

Posted Aug 26, 2005 19:01 UTC (Fri) by jzbiciak (✭ supporter ✭, #5246) [Link]

bnetd is a piracy enabler just like the "SUBST" command in DOS was back in the day.

For you kids out there, SUBST would let you map a directory to a drive letter. Some games that did CD checks (to verify you had the install media) were easily fooled by a copy of the CD's files in a SUBSTed directory.

Letter to Editor: Response to Florian Mueller's Release re: "Anti-IP"

Posted Sep 1, 2005 22:15 UTC (Thu) by Differance (guest, #18916) [Link]

> Even if we agree, at least for a moment, that arguing
> on the basis of a copyright carve-out is not
> identical to acting "against copyright", it's still
> not a self-sufficient argument for saying "the bnetd
> case is not against copyright". At the most, the
> reliance upon the Fair Use definition is neutral with
> respect to the concept of copyright.

Bunk again. Copyright is an exception to Fair Use, not the other way around. The statute describes both fair use and the particular rights accorded to authors.