[ILUG] SuSE redistribution

[Rick Moen]

I wrote:

> Well, I imagine doing "rpm -Uvh" on just the Adobe Acrobat package would
> suffice.  I remember marching past their headquarters building on behalf
> of DVD Jon....

Er, not Jon Johansen, but rather Dmitry Sklyarov.  

We had some inside accounts of Adobe management's reaction to that
affair:  They were extremely surprised by the technical community's
wrath, not to mention its speed and effectiveness at organising a public
relations campaign.  They had seriously thought of Sklyarov as just some
obscure Russian software pirate who could be quietly prosecuted with no
adverse consequences, and were happy to settle the matter on EFF terms,
when they learned of their error.

The main bit of DVD agitation I did, aside from writing articles to
clarify what DeCSS does and doesn't do, was attend (along with most of
Silicon Valley's Linux community) the DVDCCA v. Andrew Bunner DeCSS
case, and attend the mass protest outside the courthouse.  I posted a
few news stories from the courthouse using my PalmPilot, Topgun SSH, and
a Ricochet wireless modem.

The DVD Copy Control Association lost their main goal in that case,
through their own ineptitude:  The judge threw out their assertion of
DeCSS being a violation of trade secret statutes, on grounds that their
attorneys had stupidly entered entered the code into evidence.  But that
still left them and their MPAA overlords with the greater weapon of DMCA.

Fortunately for DVD Jon, he doesn't live behind the Disney Curtain.