[Coco] Re: [Color Computer] History Bytes

[John R. Hogerhuis]

On Mon, 2005-01-10 at 13:15, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote:
> At 01:08 PM 1/10/05 -0800, John R. Hogerhuis wrote:
> >Short of all this, one could make the ROM in user programmable flash,
> >and make it the user's responsibility to load a ROM, similar to the
> >situation with emulators. Then liability moves to the users if they
> >choose to use a purloined image... 
> 
> Inducement. The Induce Act failed (never left Judiciary) this past term,
> but not next time by all accounts. They'll get ya one way or 'tother.


As you say though, the Induce Act failed, but we should keep an eye out.
Everyone needs to watch out for any attempt to legislate around the
Sony/Betamax decision.

For now, the law is basically that technology which has significant
non-infringing uses is OK. A Coco SoC could run, quite happily, say with
an OS-9 bootloader in its ROM instead of a Microsoft ROM.

So, I'm not sure that even the Induce Act would apply in this instance,
unless selling people blank bound notebooks is considered an inducement
to infringe copyright, which I think is mildly analogous...

-- John.