Digital Piracy and DVD Copy Protections

Of all the pros and cons in the digital share or not to share debate, perhaps two of the best are Linus Torvalds and Dan Bricklin. Torvalds, of course, birthed the Linux operating system. Bricklin, on the other hand, may be slightly less well known.

The inventor of the first spreadsheet program, Dan Bricklin is a proponent of the share side of the debate. He has written extensively on his website about the dangers DVD copy protections pose to the future of computing.

The crux of Bricklin's argument is that casual computer users- those who lack an illicit agenda- are the record keepers of a generation. Copy a disk, store it in a desk somewhere for the day when a backup may become necessary. The best way to learn where we're going is to know where we've been. It's said often enough. But how true that the litigious nature of society is lending itself to so many protections... we will protect ourselves right out of a history!

Case in point: In 1999, a longtime inventor named Ziarno decided to sue the Red Cross over what he saw as patent infringements. The idea was his, Ziarno said, to collect money via a particular online donation process. Much to the chagrin of the inventor, two programmers named Eastburn and Trevor had made it a hobby to collect outdated software. Sort of a technological 'walk down memory lane.' In court, they recreated an early Compuserve site- a site that proved despite Ziarno's patent, the idea was not originally his [BBC News].