I'm so proud...

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/04/indias-copyright-proposals-are-un-american-and-thats-bad.ars

The Music And Film Industry Associations are trying to get India to toe the line.  India says "sure" but it's actually "nice try, buddy!".

Highlights:

  - I can still watch DVDs on my Linux box.  Since I refuse to install any proprietary software on any computer that I own, and don't have a TV or consumer DVD player, the only way I watch movies is either at the theater (often enough, actually) or by buying a DVD.  The Music And Film Industry Associations and their friends would try to ban DeCSS, which is of course critical to watch DVDs on Linux.

  - these b*st*rds [ you know when Sitaram brings out the swear words that someone is threatening open source or some other freedom dear to his heart ;-) ] apparently want to add India's borderline friendliness to open source as a matter of concern.

I couldn't care less if I never got to watch another movie for the rest of my life (and the music I like best is stuff like Tchaikovsky so that doesn't matter either).  If DeCSS was made illegal I would have been slightly inconvenienced, but may have considered buying a personal DVD player to use occasionally.

But this... this means war!

With that one sentence thrown into the end of their PDF, they've lost the moral high ground.  It's very clear that copyright infringement is NOT their main priority -- if it were, they should be applauding the move toward open source for its impact in reducing software piracy.

If you take this to its logical conclusion, is it really that different (in it's **attempted** scope, even if not achieved) from the salt issue?  I thought this "forcing people to buy imported stuff they can't afford even if they have local, cheaper, stuff" went out with the British Raj!