In the spirit of Chavez's decision with Linux and advocacy of Open Source.

[Solon]

I'm going to tell you about a little case involving HUGE corporate Giants, namely the movie industry, against a harmless Swede, who just happened to have broken the encryption on DVDs back 5 years ago. See, he had Linux, and unlike Micro$oft Windows it had no DVD player. So he programmed a little player that can play DVDs from anywhere, that's all he wanted, and he got slammed for it. It was called DeCSS player, and he distributed it as open source, and it was a hit. An injunction was filed, after the fact(yeah, like THAT worked) claiming it was designed to illegally copy DVDs(which is true, the source could be used for that, but then again so were VHS players back in the day). So far, as of Feb of 2004, the injunction was overturned, but he could still be sued, for practically no good reason that I can see. Just to tell you how seriously the movie industry is taken by most techies and even some media companies, here is the step by step guide for cracking DVDs, provided by the BBC, aren't they nice: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A642999

BTW: his argument was that his little program is free speech, and should not be subject to any court ruling. When the court ruled against him initially, this http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/">website was set up to counter that argument, in creative ways. Latest info on his case can be found here: http://efn.no/jonjohansen-en.html
This is the link about the most recent court decision:

http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/1078007042.html

[JanMichael]

1. If they could copyright the SUN from the sky they would.

I bet they'll go after water next, wait, they have! The Sun is next!

[Solon]

2. Hell did you know Monsanto...

has patented the Gene for Breast Cancer? Think about that.

[JanMichael]

3. Yep. But it the avalanche of this modern world I'd forgotten that they...

...will eventually hold the power over someone I love.. Sure, if I can pay, fine, if I can't, she dies.





























Shhhhh....Don't tell anyone but I'm a Socialist with a capital "S".

[Solon]

5. don't worry, its our little secret...

I'm a Socialist too.

[Dirk39]

7. I'm even worse: I'm a neo-Communist heretic in Germany....

...with a capital C. What should I do?
After the free market has brought wealth to everyone everywhere. After poverty and unemployment do not exist anymore.
After worldwide peace was established after the destruction of the evil communist empire.
Everybody is happy now.
I cannot believe that these evil Linuxists want to destroy our freedom now with their liberal totalitarian terrorist islamistic anarchist operation system.

These evil drugtakers should wake up now.

Dirk

[miss_kitty]

4. Hell, they tried to patent Basmati Rice DNA sequences

The Indian government told them to fuck off. Or something like that.

[Solon]

6. Yeah, I don't get that...

I thought that patents are for inventions not discoveries, hell in that case, I'll try to get a patent on kentucky grass, talk about a get rich scheme. :evilgrin:

ON EDIT: NO WAIT! An even better idea, get a patent out on Marijuana, then sue the Federal Government for violating free trade or some shit like that, make it international!