[Empeg-forsale] Re: For Sale: 96GB Empeg Mark2 Smoke Lens w/ Tuner Mod

[Yz33d@empegbbs-noreply.merlins.org]

Exactly, FerretBoy.  I don't think it's wrong.  You see, inorder to steal something, you have to actually take it away from someone else.  "But you're taking away their business!!"  Well I suppose Burger King is taking away McDonald's business.  You buy a cd.  That cd, along with everything on it, is yours.  You buy a computer.  That computer is yours to use as you wish.  Put your two belongings together and bam, you have an mp3.  Stealing?  I don't think so.  If you bought two rabbits from a rabbit shop, let 'em do what they gotta do, and then you wind up with more little baby rabbits.  Are you stealing from the rabbit shop?  Or are the new little bunnies rightfully yours?  

I'm not a thief and I don't cheat.  But I'm not gonna let some record company try to cheat me.  After all, they don't have to sell any cd's.  It's the trade they've chosen.  Once our transaction is made, I believe that I have the right to do as I please with MY cd, just as they have the right to spend their money as they see fit.  Now don't get me wrong.  I think they have every right to implement any kind of copy-protection contraptions into their products before I buy them.  (Afterall, the rabbit shop can neuter their rabbits before they offer to sell them.)  But once I own it, the government shouldn't be able to tell me how I can and can't use it.  That's not right.

And to clarify things, copy-protection is a gray area as far as legality goes.  I don't think anyone's ever been prosecuted for this type of thing in the US.