Copy-paste post, as I really don’t have time to edit anything this morning. Afternoon. Damn. You get the point.
Great quote from Patricia Benson, an attorney for the movie studios suing 321 Studios, who make DVD copying software that can be used to make personal backups:
« It’s like somebody selling a digital crowbar. »
As Ed Felten notes, « …the crowbar analogy pretty much speaks for itself. Ms. Benson would doubtless be shocked to learn that an outfit calling itself ‘Ace Hardware’ is selling crowbars openly, right here in sleepy Princeton, New Jersey. »
In other words, general-purpose technology can be used for general purposes — good and ill. Hollywood’s increasingly shrill and nonsensical demands that technologists only make gear that can be used for good are comparable to insisting that crowbar companies design crowbars that can only be used to jemmy open doors whose owners have lost their keys, and go limp when inserted into the jambs of all other doors.
[via Aaron Swartz and Boing Boing]