Hi Chris, in the European Union, all member countries should, by 22 December 2002, have passed laws that will prohibit the possession, sale, manufacture, import, advertisement of computer equipment that is able to defeat technological measures designed to protect copyrighted works unless that computer equipment has significant commercial purpose for other uses. My understanding is that the CBDTPA (Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act in the US contains similar wording). The exact wording is included at the bottom of this post. Now, to the extent that TCPA/Palladium will be accepted as an "effective technological measure", as I understand it (and if anyone knows any different please tell me so I can forget about this and concentrate on more productive work), possession of any computer able to be used to access files protected via TCPA/Palladium will be outlawed (subject to the significant commercial purpose test above mentioned). An (extremly) pessimistic reading might be that in Europe, we will only be able to purchase computers without TCPA or some equivalent system until such time as some large corporate persuades a judge that servers/PCs capable of running open source tools such as Zope have a "limited commercially significant purpose". So in Europe at any rate it appears that the playing field has been significantly tilted in favour of TCPA/Palladium. Thus, any one investing in software (ie Zope) that (presumably) will require non-TCPA hardware is making a gamble that the necessary hardware will continue to be available. This is I think the major difference with the PS/2 analogy: back then no corporate decision maker had to worry that future possession of an ISA card could be a criminal offence. Zope is a marvellous tool. This thread has generated a lot of comment, some say there is no problem with Zope and TCPA/Palladium, others say TCPA will be economically insignificant, others that the two factions will emergre, living parallel lives. What nobody is yet saying is that as a community we have weighed the Zope developement and implementation process against what is known about TCPA/Palladium and that as a result it is: a) no change needed, business as usual or b) TCPA/Palladium will cause us to alter how we work, what we can do in the following ways ...... or c) something else. I don't know about other folks, but clients are looking for more than a shrug of the shoulders, when we are pitching against the C#/.asp crowd. Best wishes, Rob 2. Member States shall provide adequate legal protection against the manufacture, import, distribution, sale, rental, advertisement for sale or rental, or possession for commercial purposes of devices, products or components or the provision of services which: (a) are promoted, advertised or marketed for the purpose of circumvention of, or (b) have only a limited commercially significant purpose or use other an to circumvent, or (c) are primarily designed, produced, adapted or performed for the purpose of enabling or facilitating the circumvention of, any effective technological measures. ________________________________________________________________________ Missed your favourite TV serial last night? Try the new, Yahoo! TV. visit http://in.tv.yahoo.com