Here's the story from France, Germany, Spain, the UK, and Australia. The only place I could find the story in the US is on Slashdot. Nothing wrong with Slashdot, it's just not mainstream US media as far as I can tell; so I guess it's just not news in the US. This page on the French Federal Consumer's Union has a short list of other protected CD's. The interesting thing here, also mentioned in the article from Australia, is that:

"...manufacturers protect CDs in Europe against copying but do not do so in the United States, fearing legal action against them there."

Meanwhile, the RIAA is building a database of self-admitted criminals and promising to prosecute them for the slightest recidivism. Since most file sharers would fall under the 1997 Electronic Theft Act, they would be guilty of a felony and could do time in prison. I can't believe any thinking person in the US will send in this form, and given the terms, the RIAA's abuse of the word "amnesty" to describe their offer is an insult to any US citizen's intelligence.

But that's not really the point to this analysis. The reason this is germane to FLOSS is because it involves "intellectual property" rights. It's the attitude, not the specific instance. The one thing which is becoming increasingly obvious to me as editor of WorldWatch.LinuxGazette is the cultural dichotomy of this issue. In countries such as the US or the UK, where "Intellectual Property" does have some historical basis for existence, it may be possible to inculcate a sense of illegality in the general population eventually by draconian legal measures. However, it may only succeed in doing what the US drug war has done - give the US an even higher incarceration rate as people continue to do what they want to do despite the laws.

In places such as the Far East and Latin America, however, there is no chance that such things as DMCA or WIPO can be effectively enforced. It would be like trying to outlaw the consumption of rice. You might pass the law, but no one will pay much attention to it.

The net effect of all this is simply a further deconstruction of the developed countries, and continued transfer of technology to the "third world". The lawyers, politicians and even some businesspeople in the developed countries are very busy wheeling around their heavy artillery and carefully sighting in their own feet. The myopia of the RIAA and SCO are very similar; they have failed to get even a glimpse of the long-term implications of FLOSS or the Internet.

Willy Smith, reporting from Costa Rica