On 25/02/07, Andy Random <andy.random@???> wrote:
> On Sun, 25 Feb 2007, Gordon Scott wrote:
>
> > Why I wonder should a taxpayer funded public service broadcaster need
> > DRM?
>
> As I understand it the BBC makes a significant proportion of its income
> from CD/DVD and overseas sales.
Unfortunately, DRM will not protect those sales, simply because it
does not work. As Bruce Schneier said of Microsoft's DRM, "trying to
make digital files uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet."
[1] They'll realise at some point that it was futile, but Apple,
Microsoft and all the other DRM-peddlars hope that their proprietary
formats will be the de facto standards for media files by the time
this happens.
> > I guess for similar reasons that theUK Hydrographic Office has declared
> > all it's previously public-domain information is now private, copyright
> > and chargeable .. because they're being forced to earn money directly by
> > charging us a second time for their tax-funded work.
>
> They can't legally do that can they? IANAL, but surely once it has been
> placed in the public domain it is there forever. They can certainly say
> they will no longer be making the information available and any new
> updates will be copyright, that doesn't stop people using the information
> they made public previously.
Publishing something is not the same thing as making it "public
domain" in copyright terms. AFAIK the OS has never voluntarily
assigned the copyright to the public domain, so they have the legal
right to decide how the information is used.
G
[1]
http://www.schneier.com/essay-126.html
