Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] New State laws may impact gnu-radio efforts...

[Seth David Schoen]

Dave Emery writes:

>       I hate to interrrupt good technical discussion with more bad
> news about legal issues, but unfortunately many of us face a new
> initiative by the copyright cartel in our state legislatures (in Mass
> the Great and General Court) designed to drasticly change the rules
> regarding access to radio signals.   And unlike federal laws which just
> outlaws interception of certain signals, this initiative includes
> provisions criminalizing development of software and hardware and
> allowing confiscation of tools and software as well as criminal and
> civil penalties for  merely providing assistance to others in developing
> software and hardware deemed to be illegal.   And these laws ban
> publication of directions and documentation for such software.

These bills are being tracked by Ed Felten at

http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/superdmca.html

and have been introduced in several states (and apparently passed
already in some).

-- 
Seth David Schoen <address@hidden> | Very frankly, I am opposed to people
     http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/   | being programmed by others.
     http://vitanuova.loyalty.org/     |     -- Fred Rogers (1928-2003),
                                       |        464 U.S. 417, 445 (1984)