[A2k] L&E and DRM/ TPMs - parking lot analogy

[Norbert Bollow]

Richard M Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

> What will really help blind people -- and the rest of us too -- is the
> right to distribute circumvention programs and devices.

I completely agree with this goal, and that it is worthwhile to
demand this as a legal right.  And in fact it might be worthwhile
to consider whether it should be insisted that this is an
unalienable human right, so that legal provisions which forbid
the distribution of circumvention programs could be legitimately
ignored.

However, changing the effective law (in the sense of how courts
will rule) in this way doesn't appear to be realistically possible
during the foreseeable furture (in any of the countries with whose
politics I'm at least somewhat familiar).  For this reason, I would
advise to set a goal which is realistically achievable, and beneficial
both for people with visual disabilities as well as for users of
information resources in general.  And then to form an informal but
broad alliance and push for that realistically achievable goal.

What precisely is a good short-term political goal for such an
alliance will vary from country to country, and it will depend to
some extent on how much influence certain corporate interests have
on law-making processes, on whether this influence can be effectively
publicly criticised, etc.

Greetings,
Norbert