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From: lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein)
Newsgroups: net.tv,net.legal
Subject: Re: Satellite dish cleanup : Technical Practicalities
Message-ID: <397@vortex.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 27-Aug-84 21:00:44 EDT
Article-I.D.: vortex.397
Posted: Mon Aug 27 21:00:44 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 30-Aug-84 20:35:57 EDT
References: <787@hou3c.uucp>
Organization: Vortex Technology, Los Angeles
Lines: 27

Since the government has already seen fit to declare that transmissions
can be protected by legal remedies, the issue seems somewhat academic.
The old 1934 Communications Act is only the starting point for current
communications law--to understand the rest you must look at a multitude
of (recent) legislation and court cases.

If you understand that it is illegal but feel that you want to go ahead
and break the law anyway, that's one thing.  But there is little
supporting evidence to claim that it's NOT illegal--given the current
direction of court decisions and recently enacted legislation.

To the extent that encryption systems degrade the final quality of the
transmitted picture (and most do, to some extent) what we're doing
is forcing the paying customers to put up with inferior quality simply
to try "protect" against a bunch of spoilsports who want to get
something for nothing.  Doesn't seem quite fair, eh?  But then the
freeloaders have been part of human society since the beginning of
time, and that can hardly be expected to change.  Why is it that
I suspect that the people who rip off the pay tv operations are much
the same group that go around ripping off software by copying
what isn't theirs?  The bottom line is that these people are living
under the conception that ownership of something isn't "real" unless
you can touch it and can't easily copy it.  A surprisingly obsolete
attitude from people who are pretty much technically advanced
over the mass of the population.

--Lauren--