January 22, 2003 – Robert W. Rose

I created my own country on Jennifer Government: Nation States. Hehe! Pretty neat:

The Rogue Nation of Eastern Montana is a tiny, devout nation, notable for its absence of drug laws. Its hard-nosed, intelligent population of 5 million are free to do what they want with their own bodies, and vote for whoever they like in elections; if they go into business, however, they are regulated to within an inch of their lives.

The large, corrupt government juggles the competing demands of Religion & Spirituality, Law & Order, and Commerce. The average income tax rate is 28%, but much higher for the wealthy. Private enterprise is illegal, but for those in the know there is a slick and highly efficient black market in Beef-Based Agriculture.

Crime is a problem. Eastern Montana’s national animal is the badger, which frolics freely in the nation’s many lush forests, and its currency is the rogue.

EFF takes comments on your experience with the DMCA

Ever tried watching a non-US DVD in a US DVD player and weren’t able to? Ever been blocked by a copy protection scheme with your own software or media? Let the EFF know! My comments:

I bought a copy of Unreal Tournament 2003, a video game for the PC. It comes on 3 CDs. After you load it onto your computer, in order to play it, you need to insert the 1st CD. Every time you want to play it you have to shuffle through your CD collection to find that 1st CD.

* You can’t disable this CD check without using a “no-cd crack” program, which is illegal under the DMCA.

* Using a “no-cd crack” program prevents you from being able to update the software because the update mechanism checks to see if you’ve modified the original binaries.

I play a lot of games, and a lot of them have similar “cd checks” built into them. It is EXTREMELY annoying to have to search through my CD collection whenever I want to play a game, however I would be breaking the law if I modified a game that I owned to not check for the CD upon startup.