2009-04-28, 12:05 AM
Stereo Wrote:How does free speech apply to software? Particularly software that attacks other software and affects how it runs? What exactly is he saying? Why does he need to use software to communicate his "ideas"?How is writing software NOT speech?
Since you didn't look through the DeCSS link I provided, I'll quote it for your convenience.
Quote:This finding is contrary to that of the 9th Circuit US Court of Appeals, who ruled in the Bernstein cryptography case that source code is indeed protected speech.
The EFF's site doesn't seem to be working very well at the moment, but when it's functioning properly, you can do more reading: http://www.eff.org/cgi/search-proxy.py?q...Search+EFF
Even if it wasn't protected speech, it's still a form of expression. This is a blatant attempt to control what he can and cannot do even though it has nothing to do with their copyrighted work.
Cheat Engine does nothing on its own, especially attacking other software. You can open it and run it all day long and it won't touch a single thing on your machine. Even if it did, the person running it knows full well what it is and is running it on THEIR MACHINE. You know, WHICH THEY OWN. WHICH ISN'T THE PROPERTY OF NEXON.
Novel concept. If Nexon wants that much control over what runs on your machine, they need to make it clear that they request that level of control in a contract. Not hidden among legalese. The point is that they're supposed to be understandable to ordinary people.
They're actually at an advantage in this respect, because they don't sell MapleStory's software. Other software vendors would need to prompt at the point of sale, but there is no point of sale for MapleStory's software.
And that is completely irrelevant to the argument at hand. It doesn't matter what Cheat Engine does - it matters that there is no possible copyright infringement argument in even the most ludicrous scenario I can dream up.
You might choose to express yourself with a paintbrush, you might choose to express yourself with T-shirts, you might choose to express yourself with music, I express myself with code. There's no difference. It doesn't matter what the code does. It matters that it's speech.