Beej Jorgensen

Off topic, but with DeCSS the problem wasn’t that it was proprietary or a trade secret. Once the algorithm got out, it was out. Since it had been a trade secret, there was no patent protection on it.

However, some laws and treaties prohibit distributing code that circumvents copy protection schemes, and this is where they ran into trouble.

And that’s why they were all those songs and t-shirts and other free speech items made with the DeCSS algorithm on them. Eventually the cases were dropped.

Good God… I don’t even think there’s a place in my entire town that charges that much. :(

Another potential route: your public library. Mine prints for 5¢ per page and has a web interface for uploading documents from anywhere and printing them when you go in.

In the 6 years I’ve been with Firefox on Linux on my 9-year-old laptop, I could count on both hands the number of sites that didn’t render correctly, and on one hand the number that didn’t run or weren’t performant.

Maybe I’m just lucky, but I definitely feel for folks who are stuck with Chrome and all those ads.