From: Ben Allfree <benles_at_bldigital.com>
Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 08:02:48 -0800

Fred, you win the "best post of the thread" IMHO.

You nailed why Archos cares.

Both rockbox and AV firmwares were weakly encrypted, so it would seem that
there is equal risk where access control circumvention is concerned. I do
not know how serious the risk is - as someone already commented, playing
legal system Roulette is the only way to find out.

Why would Archos get angry with one project and not the other? My guess is
that the AvOS project is an immediate threat because it affects multiple
models and probably future models that are already in the pipelines.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-rockbox_at_cool.haxx.se [mailto:owner-rockbox_at_cool.haxx.se] On
> Behalf Of Fred Maxwell
> Sent: Sunday, November 09, 2003 9:30 PM
> To: rockbox_at_cool.haxx.se
> Subject: RE: Archo killing open source....
>
> David McIntyre wrote:
>
> > It's just the way the legal system works. If I sue you for
> > something totally irrelevant, I owe you legal bills, paid for
> > by the countersuit, to pay the legal expenses.
>
> There were multiple suits and countersuits, all settled. Having testified
> in some groundless corporate lawsuits, I can assure you that the
> defendents
> rarely recoup their full legal costs -- even with countersuits.
>
> > Further, RIAA's inaction
> > toward other mp3 playback devices in the market show that, in
> > effect, they "lost" this case.
>
> There's no question that they lost, but plenty of companies who were
> victorious in court lost in the market. Pending lawsuits hurt stock
> prices,
> venture capital funding, ability to acquire bank loans, and cashflow.
>
> If Archos had any concern that the AV firmware being developed for their
> player could land them in court, then they'd have been foolish not to send
> out a cease & desist letter.
>
> That said, I don't think that the Rockbox effort has any such concerns.
> Rockbox has been in existence for quite some time and does not defeat any
> types of DRM. I think that it's a non-issue for the Rockbox developers
> and
> users.
>
> Regards,
> Fred Maxwell
Received on 2003-11-10