[MPlayer-users] Rescuing a scratched DVD

[D Richard Felker III]

On Tue, Dec 09, 2003 at 01:34:31PM +1000, Adam Nielsen wrote:
> > (If cursing is illegal and you say a curse word in a forest and no one
> > hears, are you guilty? No. Same deal here.)
> 
> So if you break into someone's house and no one is around to see you, that 
> makes it legal does it?

No, because there are outside visible effects that make it possible to
distinguish whether a crime was committed or not. My point in the DVD
copying case (and cursing in the woods) is that there is no measurable
outside effect by which you can determine whether the copy was made
from the original DVD or the rented one.

Any law that makes one thing illegal, and another legal, when both
have identically measured results, is broken and unenforcible, since
there's no way to establish in a court that the illegal action was
taken rather than the legal one.

Rich