Slashdot Mirror

At least with our capitalist systems, we have Constitutions to chain our governments from being abusive, elections to remove dickheds from said government, and Courts to protect the citizens from abuse by one another or the corporations.

Of course thats what those laws are for, to prevent people from being abused by things like fake DMCA notices, , litigation that is more or less 'legal blackmail', and no president would invade another country for no reason and highly support crimes like torture for fear of impeachment. Isn't it great?

If the U.S. Copyright Office is soliciting ideas on this concept, a method exists to address accessibility for those disabled, and the "lost due to bankruptcy" sides. Two parts address each side.

Part 1: Copyright holders should be required to register each anti-circumvention method with the copyright office in exchange for which a number (which has no legal value) will be assigned to the method. IP firms which specialize in protection methods could register their methods as "base classes" for others. References to patent numbers might also be helpful.

Part 2: The holder then keeps a list available for public viewing which indicates the works and which copy protection methods they have employed. (Example: ebook "How To Be A Dummy," published 8Oct2005, document format: PRC, DRM method: 1,554,776 (Ref 334,665) ). Note that this is not registering your works. Ideally, this list should be notarized, either electronically or physically to prevent post-litigation tampering.

Part 1 takes the good old cryptography rule to heart, "The algorithm is never the secret. The input key is the secret." Two things happen here: bad protection is shamed away from being used, and the court system has a public notice of intent on the behalf of the holder requesting that the DMCA provide anti-circumvention enforcement. Then the U.S. Courts would only need to prove or disprove that the declared method was actually in use and attempting to protect the work in question. If expert commentary were recognized on at least "base class" methods, then prebuilt testimony could be used in courts to make enforcement of base-64 encoding methods an embarassment to the litigant.

Part 2 gives the courts the benefits of documentation regarding protected works. It also lets those who provide support to disabled individuals have a course of action with regard to legal circumvention. So it could, for example, allow someone who converts DRMed ebooks to audiobooks to become a limited, authorized agent to perform such action with nothing more than some paperwork from the copyright holder. If the copyright holder has disappeared (death or otherwise), then the method is publicly known and could be cracked within governed rules.

In short, there exists the potential to not take the teeth out of the DMCA while still executing it a more efficient way. Hopefully the methods described above represent ideas that tilt more power towards the public without actually removing any power of the copyright holder. Yes, many of us believe it should disappear, but the U.S. did sign an international treaty of which the DMCA is only a manifestation. Since the U.S. is a WTO member, it was a willing participant, although it could have fought back a little harder.

Re: The Anti-DMCA FAQ

So, in otherwords, the RIAA looks like it has gotten fed up with ISPs, and is redoing their last successful approach to dealing with Copyright Infringement.

The point here is that ISPs may not have a choice about whether or not to adopt this, IF the RIAA/MPAA is as successful with this as they were with the DMCA.

Considering that the majority of Congress is still under the impression that the DMCA is a good law, it would seem that the legalizing this Code of Conduct is a fair bet within the U.S..

I can see it now:

"I was using PSP to create some graphics from my new PSP game. Of course I'm using the PSP to develop it. I just hope the PSP don't think I'm violating the DCMA."

When I heard about this ink/printer suit and the garage door opener I couldn't believe such a law would exist long. However, I'm concerned this ruling does not address the problems with the law itself, and possibly supports it. We need this law struck down, not just ruled against. Get out there and support the EFF and anti-dmca.org. We need the law repealed before they stick the law in your BIOS and linux becomes and outlaw OS.

Killing children is something I personally believe I would choose not to do at any point (barring extreme circumstances, which I beleve makes anyone capable of anything) and no one I know (including my muslim friends) does it either--if one of them did, I'd really want to get inside their brains to know at what point they stopped being rational.

My hope is that all 3 bodies of law are smart enough to transcend their religious confictions and enact laws capable of outlawing things that make a society disfunctional. The Bible has no problem with rape--I however do. I can also see where laws governing monopolies, and driving under the influence have their place as well, but aside from modern cults, you won't see much of this in any religious doctrine.

That's all I'm saying. The moon is a bit past third quarter now. :D

Hmm, did you used to work for Adobe? :o)

Oh, and for more anti-dmca fun, don't forget anti-dmca.org for all of your fun "Where's my rights?" headlines.

http://lists.anti-dmca.org/mailman/listinfo/dmca_d iscuss

Have you read this?

Once they start cracking and hacking, are they a legitimate owner in the language of the license? Have they voided the licence and ceased to be legitimate owners?

It is not "cracking and hacking" except in the most respectable sense of those words, and it certainly should not be illegal.

It's simply using what you've paid for as you see fit.

... Madonna,
for her hit mp3 "What the fuck do you think you are doing?"

Who exactly, might you ask, gave the RIAA the right to be the "Ministry of Sound"? Where, after all, were they granted these broad powers of search and seizure of your personal information? It's not as if they hold copyright to all of the music, or even a majority of it. Will another large copyright holder decide to embrace this business model as well? Will there be competing (and incompatible) offers of Amnesty? Who would you rather get screwed by, when it comes to major media copyright holders? What, in short, is to blame for this mess?

That's right, it's the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Disclosure: Link is to anti-dmca.org, and hence biased. But that's the problem with hypertext; links are particularly and exactly biased in that they take you to the one page on the internet that the linker wants you to visit. It's up to you, however, to click the link and learn about what just might be the greatest threat to our intellectual freedom today.

I don't do anything illegal online (warez, stealing music, etc)

Then those in power will just have to make the things that you do illegal. It used to be legal (in my country) to talk about reverse engineering electronic devices, but it no longer is. It used to be illegal for law enforcement to place a wiretap without a warrant, but now they can place wiretaps indiscriminately since there are now no judicial checks on the system. It used to be legal in the UK to keep your encryption keys to yourself, but now if you don't reveal them to law enforcement you are commiting a crime.

Just because what you do is legal now does not mean that it will be in the future. The "You shouldn't care about giving up your rights if you are doing nothing wrong" argument is one the government often uses when taking away those rights. I am just shocked they have such a big percentage of the population believing the propaganda.

Do you know that the DMCA is the result of a treaty passed by the WIPO (itself a cousin of WTO)? When you see people, protesting in the streets to end the WTO treaties -- THE DMCA IS JUST ONE UNDEMOCRATIC, ANTI-CITIZEN products of the WTO!!

For all the times on /. ive posted this link, and other bits that let people know exactly where the DMCA is coming from -- no one seems to put two and two together.

Please read below:anti-dmca.org/faq_local.html

For the Pro-public domain crowd at /., who dont support overbearing copyright law, do you realize, that the people who are protesting in the streets -- the world over -- against the WTO are on your side ? This /. crowd, being very in-tune with IP and Technology are just one small group, angry and frustrated with the DMCA. The DMCA is a PRODUCT of un-democratic bodies like the WTO -- literally funded by massive multi-nationals -- who are re-writing international relations in order to entrench their power. The DMCA is just ONE MINOR aspect of this effort.

The USA's corrupt, plutocratic government is only partly responsible for the DMCA, in reality, they have empowered the bureaucracy to take their weight and allow it to be wielded by the Lobbyists and Lawyers of International Capitalists.

It doesnt matter if you think Im a crazed (i am not) anti-capitalist (i am), the reality is that Corporate Bodies are very literally writing international treaties, that are later enforced in the domestically in the USA, Canada, Australia, EU etc etc etc. The WTO is staffed / funded by the International Plutocrats... * THEY * are responsible for the DMCA -- your corrupt Congress is only an after-thought in the DMCA effort.. and all the rest.

at least as much as those who predicted midi would replace studio musicians by now.

In popular music, it largely has. In some genres, it has entirely. (Generic Trance anyone?)

why would a niche market drive (and take over) a huge market?

Stranger things have happened. The niche market of movies has taken over the electronics industry.

The "what the fuck" clip has already even been remixed. The site with the links for that is here.

A screenshot of madonna's hacked site can be found here.

If you're one of those "hang 'em high" types who have absolutely no regard for people after serving a criminal sentence, read no further. It would just be lost on you.

Do you realize the implications of what you're saying, whether or not it is the reality of things? How is anyone supposed to put their life back together after being released from incarceration or probation if everyone shuns them? This creates a permanent underclass of people who very likely have something positive to contribute to society. The costs of a prior mistake, or worse, of being convicted under laws that make no sense would be, and are too high for anyone to bear in a purportedly civil society.

Under a capitalist system, your scenario makes sense, but I think it shows us one of the flaws of such a system that puts scarlet letters on people out of selfish interest.

My interest is fair use, the ability to record my compositions and performance with studio grade equipment at a reasonable cost.

The first thing I thought when I read the original statement was "It is pretty sad that we now have to qualify things in the terms that the frickin RIAA has set out." We are so skittish that we feel the need to qualify ourselves with "...and I will be using this device for legal activities."

What the F is going on!? I almost want to just stop following tech news, unsubscribe from the EFF newsletter and the DMCA discussion list , stick my fingers in my ears and yell LA LA LA LA LA! I am just growing more and more frustrated with the whole mess. I am ashamed that we have this kind of environment in what is supposed to be a country of Freedom.

Ok... here it is:

Madonna cursing

and then there's the DANCE REMIX

--

The DMCA is the local enactment of a WIPO treaty. WIPO is a Pro-Capitalist-Globalization group affiliated with the World Trade Organization that seeks to spread Capitalist ethos worldwide. When people march in the streets decrying the WTO for enacting one-sided Pro-Capitalist, Anti-Citizen(democracy/fairtrade) treaties, The DMCA (and many others) are EXACTLY what they are against. Treaties written (literally) by Capitalists in order to entrench their 'rights' without consultation or consideration of the rights of the World's Citizens.

MOST NATIONS are members of WIPO, from the faq at anti-dmca.org you find this:

Why did Congress pass the DMCA?

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) drafted an international treaty that requires signatory nations to enforce particular rights in their own National laws. Some believed further U.S. legislation was necessary to implement U.S. adherence to the treaty. The result was the DMCA. It is sometimes referred to as the WIPO Treaty Implementing Legislation.

Bottom Line: Capitalist Globalization brings undemocratic legislation Unless of course, it is blacklisted by the American Plutocracy (worldcourt (imperialists), kyoto(industrialists), anti-nuke treaties w/ russia (military-industrialists))...in which case (some) countries just withdraw...

I'd suggest right now you go over to Anti-DMCA and read up, link up, and sign up for the mailing list. We need to get many people on the same page, then attack the law causing us trouble, not the people using the law. The law is the root cause of these problems and it must be reformed or corporations will continue to abuse it.

I haven't read it, but from what I understand the DMCA only concerns copyrights, specifically prohibiting the "trafficking" (note how everything in federal law is justified from a "commerce" perspective, since that has the least chance of being struck down) of technological measures that circumvent other technologies that protect copyrighted works. The founders of the US could never have imagined that products could be made to "talk" to each other, and that such communications could be copyrighted and used to prevent interoperability. I presume that they would disapprove. Here's why:

What does copyright law protect? It protects the "right" of creators to profit from their work, thereby encouraging them to perform such work to begin with. Many of the founders, especially Franklin, expounded upon the concept of copyright by describing it in exactly such terms. The DMCA would tend to pass the smell test in this regard by outlawing practices which are designed to deprive copyright holders of this "right".

This case, though, is not about protecting the profits from a copyrighted work. It is not a copyrighted work being protected by a technological measure; it is a technology being protected by a copyrighted work. People don't buy inkjet cartridges for the copyrighted 64-bit encryption key or the Lexmark logo that is saved in the chip somewhere. They buy the cartridges for their ability to print ink on paper. They would do just that whether they had the key on them or not. The value is in the *product*, not in the *creation*, and manufactured products are neither "inventions" nor "writings".

Microsoft has a much better case than this with the X-Box "mod" chips, since they can at least claim that the chips provide access to copyrighted works and hence deprive their owners of the profits from them.

The DMCA is the US embodyment of the The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Copyright Treaty (WCT).

This treaty, (probably) written by the RIAA/MPAA (literally) was approved by appointed trade representatives to WIPO. (see here)

When you see people marching as advocates of Fair Trade (like the opposition to FTAA) they are protesting neo-liberalization of trade by the WTO... so, dont like DMCA? dont want DMCA in *your* country? Join the effort to end Corporate Globalization through the WTO... the DMCA is a *result* of these thieves carving up our future.

Australians, Canadians, and Europeans: Find out who is your WIPO/WTO delegates are, and write a letter condemning neoliberalism (as embodied in the WCT(DMCA treaty)) and send copies to your PM/President and Federal Representative... ill be doing that now.

that sounds like a very reasonably point. Do the rules and regulations of the courtroom explicitly state this? What reasoning is offered in the existing body or law or in defense of the practice as it stands. As legal contracts and rights-licensing issues become more invasive in today's society, should 'bad law' (or contract or any other legal document) be written so badly as to be indecipherable to a group of 12 mature adults? I'm not suggesting that we make every contract a dick-and-jane story for the lowest-common denominator, but can't we get contracts written in plain english. Is there a precident for this or somewhere in the juror's rules of conduct. Does someone explicitly say that the legal system can filter what amount of 'relevant' information gets passed through to the jury.
Laws are the rules of our society. And they need to be understood. Not just by the people that write them, but by the people who are agree to be governed by them.
I for one like to know what the government around me can do. I like to know how the leaders and programs I support are affecting my world.
I don't fear bad cops, I fear bad law. ...just a thought

(no disrespect to the good folks of defendbrooklyn.com. I lived there for a while and still love that place, but yeah it's a tough town some blue nights. fulton sq.=missing ya. this is a real bad cop )

You mean you didn't know? According to turner broadcasting it is illegal.

by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>

Much has been written about what's wrong with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). After all, it's been used to jail programmers, threaten professors, and censor publications, and because of it, foreign scientists have avoided traveling to the U.S. and prominent researchers have withheld their work. In a white paper about the unintended consequences of the DMCA, the Electronic Frontier Foundation argues that the DMCA chills free expression and scientific research, jeopardizes fair use, and impedes competition and innovation. In short, this is a law that only the companies who paid for it could love.

<http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/20020503_dmca_conseq uences.html >
<http://www.educause.edu/issues/dmca.html>
<http://anti-dmca.org/>

Just who are we talking about here? Primarily the large movie studios and record labels, who own the copyrights on vast quantities of content and who have been working with one another and via their industry associations, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), to control how we are allowed to interact with that content. Their unity of purpose and storm-trooper tactics have led some to dub them the Content Cartel.

<http://www.riaa.org/>
<http://www.mpaa.org/>

However, the DMCA is merely one link in a chain that's being used by the Content Cartel and many others to restrict access to the shared cultural heritage of the world, and in the process, extract money from our pockets, stifle innovation and competition, and protect entrenched interests.

DMCA and Trusted Systems -- I recently attended a talk by Professor Tarleton Gillespie <tlg28@cornell.edu> of Cornell University in which he made a compelling argument for how the Content Cartel is using the legal force of the DMCA to direct us down a path where content cannot exist outside of a trusted system, which is a set of hardware, software, and file formats that all agree on what the user is allowed to do with a piece of content. (The trust here is between the pieces of the system, because the content owners don't trust their customers at all.) The trusted system's goals are simple - to eliminate all unauthorized uses and create a situation where we pay more for the content we consume.

A trusted system could prevent you not only from copying a CD or DVD, but also from listening to the CD more than a certain number of times in a day or skipping commercials on a DVD or on broadcast television. Along with requiring us to buy new hardware to play such content and buy new protected versions of the content we already own, a trusted system could have another ill effect. That's because it could prevent us from working with content we would create, using tools such as those Apple kindly provides in iMovie, iDVD, iTunes, and iPhoto. In the worst case scenario, Apple could lose not just the Mac's current digital media advantage in the marketplace, but the ability to work with digital media at all. See Cory Doctorow's article on the broadcast flag in TidBITS-642 for more on this disturbing possibility.

< http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06901>

Professor Gillespie illustrated how this could happen with a discussion of the awkwardly named Content Scramble System (CSS), used to prevent people from copying DVDs, and the DeCSS software created by a Norwegian teenager with help from others on the Internet to build a Linux DVD player.

(A brief aside: DeCSS violates the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions, which ban devices or services that are designed primarily to circumvent copy prevention technologies, that have only limited commercially significant purpose other than circumvention, or that are marketed for circumvention. The DMCA was signed into law in large part to bring the U.S. into compliance with a pair of World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaties that require anti-circumvention protections in the copyright law of signatory nations. You might think Norway would be included among the nations signing these WIPO treaties, but in fact, only 37 countries have signed on, including the U.S. and Japan, along with the likes of Kyrgyzstan, Gabon, and Paraguay. We're not talking about full international support here, especially in contrast to the 149 signatories to the more general and long-standing Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works.)

<http://www.wipo.int/treaties/ip/wct/>
<http://www.wipo.int/treaties/ip/berne/>

In particular, Professor Gillespie focused on three defenses used in the court case filed against Eric Corley, publisher of the hacker magazine 2600, by eight movie studios to prevent 2600 from publishing the DeCSS software. Although Eric Corley didn't create DeCSS, he made it available on the 2600 Web site. His lawyers' defenses focused on ways DeCSS might escape the anti-circumvention provisions in the DMCA, which was the law under which the case was being tried.

Let's look at these defenses, all of which the court eventually dismissed in ruling for the movie studios and enjoining 2600 magazine from posting the DeCSS code. A subsequent appeal also failed, and the defendants chose not to appeal again to the Supreme Court (probably a wise move - this particular case struck me as fairly weak).

<http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/MPAA_DVD_cases/2000 0830_ny_amended_opinion.pdf>
<http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/MPAA_DVD_cases/200111 28_ny_appeal_decision.html>

Create a Linux Player -- The primary defense that Eric Corley's legal team, funded by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), advanced was that CSS was reverse engineered and DeCSS written to further the development of a DVD player for Linux, which allegedly had no way of playing DVDs at the time (four players are available now; see the Linux Journal review linked below for details). Unfortunately, the judge deemed the defense utterly irrelevant because the DMCA offers no relief based on motivation. In short, if a technology violates the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions, the purpose for which that technology was created simply doesn't matter. The judge also wasn't impressed with the fact that DeCSS is actually a Windows program, so although it could be argued that it was a necessary step in the creation of a Linux DVD player, it's a weak argument.

<http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=564 4>

The obstacle that actually lies in the way of creating a DVD player is the lack of a key to decrypt the CSS encryption used on DVDs. The only way to come by such a key is to sign a contract licensing CSS from the DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA), a group made up of companies representing the movie studios, consumer electronics companies, and the computer industry. At $15,500, the licensing cost is not usurious, but the contract effectively prevents individuals and small organizations from licensing CSS. For instance, in the event of a material breach of contract, the licensee is liable for $1 million, and damages can grow to a maximum of $8 million. In addition, the contract prevents licensees from reverse engineering CSS or working in any way counter to the goal of CSS's protection of DVDs.

Put simply, the CSS license is the sort of thing only large companies can reasonably sign, so it's clear that the effect of the DVD CCA contract is to keep newcomers out of the cozy little club. Perhaps that wasn't a likely concern before the age of the Internet, but the rise of Linux and the open source movement shows that small, informal groups organized over the Internet can produce software that threatens the largest of companies.

The end result here is that innovation is stifled. Companies that license CSS cannot, even if they wanted to, produce products that consumers might like to buy, such as DVD recorders that could copy a DVD. That keeps new companies, niche players, or even independent programmers from competing with the consumer electronics giants with innovative features that in any way run afoul of CSS. So although the consumer electronics companies might not have minded consumers copying DVDs, since they would sell the equipment to make that happen, it's worthwhile for them to abide by CSS to eliminates potential competition.

Equally as problematic is that the CSS license's numerous requirements force the consumer electronics firms to be technologically responsible for regulating our movie viewing and copying behaviors for the studios. Signing this draconian contract is an all-or-nothing deal, so the movie studios have cleverly managed to pass off the dirty work of technological regulation on everyone else (they just produce the content; the DVD and player manufacturers must implement CSS). It's a big step toward a trusted system in which all the parties are bound by the CSS contract.

(As an aside, another effect of the CSS contracts is also to move the entire issue from the world of copyright law, where there is at least some presumption of needing to benefit the public, into the world of contract law, which doesn't give a damn about the public good. If this continues to the logical extreme, the concept of copyright, and unauthorized access to any content, could be locked up forever in simple contracts that lie underneath a trusted system's technologies, all backed up by the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions.)

Perform Encryption Research -- Another defense that Eric Corley's lawyers put forth was that DeCSS was created as research into the CSS encryption method, since the DMCA does allow copy-prevention technologies to be circumvented for encryption research. However, the DMCA specifically requires that the encrypted copy be obtained lawfully and that the person performing the research make a good faith effort to obtain authorization in advance. In addition, the decryption tools from such research may be shared only with collaborators for good faith research purposes - in other words, distributing these tools publicly isn't kosher.

Note the words good faith above. In determining whether encryption research is good faith, the judge said the court must determine whether the results are disseminated in a way that advances the state of knowledge of encryption technology, whether the person is engaged in legitimate study of work in encryption, and whether the results are communicated to the copyright owner in a timely fashion. Deciding that none of these tests were true of Eric Corley, the judge dismissed out of hand the claims that DeCSS had protection under the encryption research exception to the DMCA.

Looking past the specifics of this case, consider the ways in which encryption research is considered to be in good faith. You must be a legitimate researcher, have a goal of advancing the state of knowledge, and have at least made an effort to get authorization from the copyright owner. Now think about how these requirements completely disenfranchise the interested individuals and the Internet technical geek community. What does it take to be considered a legitimate researcher - a white coat, thick glasses, and a job with a university, corporation, or government body?

What we're seeing here is how the DMCA in essence props up the status quo, denying that legitimate research could be done outside the halls of academia or a company's R&D department. Left on the outside are the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers... oh hell, go read the rest of Here's to the crazy ones from Apple's Think Different ad campaign for yourself. Whether we're talking about Apple's target audience or the open source community that has had Microsoft running scared is immaterial. The point is that the DMCA, supported by this court ruling, prevents that sort of person from doing anything that's not sanctioned.

<http://www.apple.com/thinkdifferent/>

Report as a Journalist -- A third defense that Eric Corley's lawyers offered was that posting DeCSS was protected by the First Amendment's protection of the press, and by the First Amendment in general. It took the judge significantly longer to dispose of this defense, since free speech issues are notoriously tricky, but in the end, he concluded that the speech in this case is content-neutral due to the functional nature of the DeCSS code. He then went on to note that regulation of content-neutral speech is acceptable if it advances the government's interests and that preventing the copying of digital works is a government interest due to the existence of the Copyright Clause in the U.S. Constitution and the importance to the U.S. economy of exporting copyrighted materials.

If you haven't looked at the Constitution recently, the Copyright Clause reads, To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. Personally, I come down on the side of copyright existing to benefit society through the progress of science and the useful arts, and only secondarily to give authors and inventors exclusive rights. By my reading, the government interest thus lies in promoting the progress of science and the useful arts, and there's no question that the DMCA eliminates progress.

<http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constit ution.articlei.html>

But I digress. The final result of the case was that Eric Corley and 2600 may not post DeCSS on their Web site or knowingly link their Web site to any other site on which DeCSS is posted. The decision was worded carefully so that linking in general would not be affected by the DMCA, but only in cases where those responsible for the link (a) know at the relevant time that the offending material is on the linked-to site, (b) know that it is circumvention technology that may not lawfully be offered, and (c) create or maintain the link for the purpose of disseminating that technology.

In other words, it's acceptable to link to DeCSS if your intent is not to disseminate DeCSS, but merely to report on its availability, a fact I proved to my satisfaction with a trivial Google search on download DeCSS that provided over 17,000 hits, many of them still functional. You can verify this for yourself; just remember that DeCSS is only for Windows.

<http://www.google.com/search?q=download+DeCSS>

Here's where Professor Gillespie's argument becomes a bit more speculative. Although the court went no further in this case, he suggested that in any future cases in which the legitimacy of linking was called into question, he felt that the court would include in its deliberation the nature of the publication in question. For example, if the New York Times chose to link to DeCSS or some other technology that violated the DMCA (as in fact the San Jose Mercury News and Wired News have, in making the point that a ban on linking is seriously problematic), he felt that the court would have little trouble accepting the journalistic intent of the link. On the other hand, if some silly little electronic newsletter aimed at Macintosh and Internet users were to perform the same action, he was concerned that it would be more difficult to make the same defense. And if TidBITS wouldn't match up to the journalistic level of the New York Times in the eyes of a theoretical court, what about a blogger?

The end result would be that this court's interpretation of the DMCA could have the same effect of stabilizing the large news organizations in favor of the small newsletters and bloggers who are redefining what journalism means in today's Internet-enabled world. Speaking as someone who has done some of that redefining over the last 12 years, that worries me.

Regime of Arrangement -- In the end, Professor Gillespie argues that the true power of the DMCA is not so much related to its effect on copyright but these ways it weaves established organizations like large manufacturing corporations, research universities, and media conglomerates into what Professor Gillespie calls a regime of arrangement.

Don't assume that these established institutions are necessarily being co-opted against their will. Apple's Think Different campaign reads like a manifesto for the very people who are disenfranchised under this regime of arrangement, and yet Apple is a member of the DVD CCA, and, obviously, a licensee of CSS for the DVD hardware and software that comes with the Mac. The open source community has proved the power of teams of independent programmers as an alternative to the traditional software development model, not to mention the ivory towers of research institutions. Distance education hints at the decline of the traditional university, and entrenched media organizations have struggled for years with the way the Internet lets anyone be a publisher.

If there's one theme we take into the 21st century, it's decentralization, and you can see it everywhere. The PC overtaking the mainframe, Napster changing the face of music distribution despite the recording industry's best efforts, DeCSS causing the movie studios conniptions, Linux successfully challenging the mighty Microsoft's server operating systems, even the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon - all are examples of the power of decentralization and the ever-increasing clash between these forces of decentralization and the centralized power structures that control everything about our world. I have no answers here, but I'd note that despite the awesome power of both systems, I'm seeing the forces of decentralization making significant inroads.

What Can We Do? I've been attending a number of talks on copyright and intellectual property issues at Cornell over the last year. Almost without exception, the talks are warnings of dark times ahead (obviously, most are slanted toward the academic and library worlds), but at the same time, none have offered any suggestions for how we can work to reverse the efforts on the part of the Content Cartel to lock up our cultural heritage and stifle innovation for the future.

At a recent talk by Alan Davidson of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), I chatted with Alan afterwards about this problem, and he agreed it was a concern, but had no silver bullet to prevent the hordes of well-funded Content Cartel lobbyists from having their way with our elected representatives. I, too, have trouble knowing what will be effective, but I offer these possibilities.

<http://www.cdt.org/>

• Spread the word to everyone you know. In most cases, the best argument is probably that the entire situation is a move on the part of big business to make everyone buy new consumer electronics and new copies of all of their content. If the Content Cartel gets their way, it will cost you. In some situations, making the intellectual commons argument - that our culture needs access to its cultural heritage to grow - can be effective, though it's generally too abstract. Try to avoid sounding like a zealot (I know it's hard: every time I hear of the latest attempt on the part of these companies to criminalize their customers, it makes me want to spit.)

• Support civil liberties organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and CDT that are working to protect our rights. As you'll see in the PayBITS block at the end of this article, I plan to donate all the proceeds from this article to the EFF to help do my part.

<http://www.eff.org/>

• Between 19-Nov-02 and 18-Dec-02, write to the Library of Congress with any evidence you can provide on whether non-infringing uses of certain types of copyrighted materials are likely to be adversely affected by the DMCA's anti-circumvention mechanisms. To get an idea of what they're looking for, I highly recommend reading Dan Bricklin's Copy Protection Robs the Future essay, in which he talks about his efforts to post an original copy of VisiCalc, the ground-breaking spreadsheet program he created.

<http://www.copyright.gov/1201/comment_forms/>
<http://www.bricklin.com/robfuture.htm>

• Express your concerns to your elected representatives whenever appropriate. EFF maintains an action center that makes it extremely easy to write your appropriate representatives. While you're at it, you might ask how it is that an entire industry is allowed to create a restrictive technology like CSS, require highly limiting contracts, and influence legislation (the DMCA). One of the industry witnesses in the Corley case testified that this three-pronged approach was exactly what the movie studios aimed at creating. Ironically, given that the end goal is a trusted system, this sounds a whole lot like the legal definition of a trust, which is a combination of corporations for the purpose of reducing competition and controlling prices throughout an industry.

<http://action.eff.org/>

I have to admit, I'm worried that none of this will be enough. The Content Cartel has the aura of celebrity on their side - they're protecting the rock stars and movie stars who sit at the pinnacle of today's society. They're the cool kids, whereas the people who campaign for civil liberties are often considered dull and overly earnest. My main ray of hope is that the reason most of the software industry voluntarily gave up copy protection technologies - primarily that consumers hated copy protection - will rise again, but unless we speak out now, all of our content may be locked up in a trusted system protected by the DMCA.

I think you mean, it plays jokes on you. ;P

I'm not going to jail for you, or you, or anybody!

This may be true, but I refuse to use the term incorrectly when I know better. Please read the following. I did not write it, it is from someone on a mailing list, when someone misused the term "hacker", then argued that it was the accepted use of the word. The author puts it better than I ever could. (you can view the original post to the list here

-------

If you haven't already, read Orwell's "1984".

The use of words is absolutey critical, and using language for social engineering by governments, churches, and corporations is not the stuff of science fiction ... just ask anyone who works in marketing. It happens every day, and the deleterious effects on our society and our world which result are trivial to see. (ponder the definition of the word 'terrorist' and how fluid it has become, and the real, physical consiquences which are apparent and resulting in no small part from the misuse and mutation of that word)

Now think to yourself: Who owns the rights to every dictionary in circulation (Merriem-Webster, Oxford, what have you)?

That's right, the publishers. Organizations that have been members of the copyright cartel since the sixteenth century, a cartel which in its history had at least one person drawn and quartered for possessing a printing press and not being a member of the cartel.

With respect to the word 'hacker' it is highly debatable whether the misuse of the term was deliberately and knowingly inserted into the dictionary as a form of semantic engineering, or whether the publishers simply picked up on the misuse of the term being promoted and propogated by another copyright cartel: the entertainment cartel.

The same applies to the word 'piracy,' though poking through some very early dictionaries certainly suggests its definition was changed as part of a conscious effort at semantic engineering (the incorrect, propoganda definition of the word equating copyright violators with rapists, pillagers, and murderers on the high seas was in at least one dictionary long before misuse of the word had become widespread).

What is known for certain is that, for other words of political significance, dictionaries have been known to publich definitions adhering to one political agenda or another PRIOR to their widespread use in language. The "authority" of the dictionary has been used, more than once, to deliberately modify and change the use of language to promote a political agenda.

If you're really interested in such things, look up the history of the usage of the word 'he' and 'his' as a gender-neutral or gender-indeterminate pronoun. In the United States, the use of 'they' and 'their' (singular) was in widespread use around the turn of the 20th century. Grammaticians displaced that, deliberately, with 'he' and 'his'. One of the comments made by one of these early 'semantic engineers' was something to the effect of "as in nature, when there is a choice, the male pronoune shall dominate." It is only in recent years that the use of 'they' and 'their' (singular) as a gender-neutral pronoun has come back into use, despite the linguistic orthodoxy to the contrary.

There are other examples, indeed a plethora of them from the cold war and even the war on drugs.

In other words, blind faith in the dictionary is as misplaced as blind faith in anything else (e.g. religion, government, or McDonald's). The publishers have as many ulterior motives, and as unreliable ethics in persuing those motives, as every other industry has come to have.

You misused the word 'hacker' on a mailing list of people who know better. You were corrected, you have been educated, and your response is to call everyone a hypocrit.

A community of hackers, in the old and august meaning of the word, is not at all hypocrictical for being annoyed with you for misusing the term and equating them to a bunch of petty criminals, any more than a person of a particular ethnicity, who stands for freedom, is a hypocrit for being angry when another group deliberately denigrates them. Or, put another way, fighting speech with speech is not the same as advocating censorship, and you should recognize the difference.

Frankly, you should drop the attitude, admit you made a mistake, and move on. Everyone makes mistakes ... that is part of life. Clinging to them out of stubbornness, however, is just silly.

--------

For the love of God, please vote for her!

Vote for her because her ideas rock.

But also vote for her because she is running against Howard Coble, who is in the back pocket of the RIAA.

If you love the First Amendment and hate the DMCA, send Grubb to Congress!

Sorry to single you out but it's sad how many posters on /. feel the need to insert an acronym or two just for the hell of it...[w]ould the fifteen seconds that it would have cost you to provide a little clarity kill you?

When's the last time you heard someone here speak of the American Standard Code for Information Interchange? Discussions on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (or worse, the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act) would get unnecessarily verbose were it not for the various abbreviations and acronyms that are in common use.

Abbreviations to refer to the various Star Trek movies might confuse in a forum with a more general audience...but in a forum (such as this) that's visited mainly by geeks and with Star Trek as the subject, it's not unreasonable to expect a certain minimal knowledge of common jargon used by that group of people.

(Besides, a simple Google search would point a n00b in the right direction. If you're not willing to do a minimal amount of fact-finding on your own, maybe you'd find this service more to your liking.)

On patents, I think the most sensible argument against them was presented in a letter to the US Patent Office by Donald Knuth, where he points out that software and the algorithms used therein are mathematics, and mathematics have previously been exempted from patents.

Regarding copyrights, while I would be quite happy with a short limitation on the life of a copyright (5 years would suit me just fine... 10-15 would be ok, anything longer is ludicrous in the technology field), I think his presentation is quite a bit more radical than most professional programmers might agree with after putting some thought into it.

Some of us don't particularly like working as employees of companies which we do not own, but without the protection that copyright provides it would be impossible to make a living by creating consumer software products. Yes, you could write custom software under contract to a corporation for money, or write software as an employee of a company, but to write a product for consumers? Who would pay for that? The average person who'd want to use a word processor certainly isn't going to cough up enough money to pay my rent for the amount of time I'd need to write one...

Without copyright, if I write a cool app and want to sell it, I'd only sell it once before anyone who wanted it could just get it for free... This is absolutely great for code I write in my spare time for fun, or tools and libraries I write to help me do my work where they might be useful to others, but *something* has to put food on the table.

However, I do think that once you buy something, at least the copy you own should be able to be used by you in whatever manner you wish. So his speech seems misguided... The real threat is that with recent legislation, that is less and less true.

I support the EFF and donate.... but the presentation is off target. I hope his arguments before the Supreme Court are less radical and stay based on the fact that 100 years is way too long for a copyright, rather than implying that copyright is bad.

Think he used a pirated copy of PowerPoint? ;)

We're all glad HP backed down, but what scares me is that the "Responsible Disclosure" FUD continues. On Bugtraq people write that CERT and SecurtyFocus are "established parties" and everyone who does not give them their so-called "0days" is irresponsible (at least CERT is known to sell 0days). I personally won't give them my 0days early.

The "Responsible Disclosure" draft continues to get advertised, though it was not approved by the IETF .

Why do people think about giving away the right of free speech just because of some FUD?

Even in the unlikely case if this bad RFC passes, does it mean that that people are safer when they disclose problems - I definitely don't think so personally.

So the facts are: some companies can't write secure code, and it is more expensive to write code securely.

Just check "Help -> About" on Windows before using the word "responsibility".

The easiest solution is to shoot the messenger and to outlaw saying the emperor has no clothes. But this won't fix the problem in the real world. Such regulations will only alienate a lot of people and will make things worse.

Even if it passes its obviously unconstitutional and any judge in his right mind will strike it down.

Really? I sure hope so.

What the tech community needs is a united front on the issues. Sure, there's the EFF, DigitalConsumer.org, anti-dmca.org, digitalspeech.org, publicknowledge.org, etc. etc. etc - all with varying degrees of influence, completeness, and scope. It really seems like a big duplication of effort.

Whether you like them or not, we could learn a lot from the National Rifle Association. The NRA has their "protecting our freedoms" issues, and they've managed to unite a group of fairly individualist people for a common goal. Legislators do not defy the NRA lightly in Congress, while they routinely screw over the tech industry. We need a solid lobby like the NRA to watch over our interests in Washington.

When I found Parish's analysis some time ago, that's what I thought: If this is all true, than just letting people know about it can kill Microsoft. Because if some potential Microsoft stockholders know about it, they will wait before they buy the stock, if they don't buy the stock, the value of other stock won't increase so fast any more, the existing stockholders would notice that and some of them will start selling their stock, if finally so many people starts selling the stock that its value starts decreasing, then even more of stockholders will start to sell, but no one will want to buy it at that point (those who will want to buy it, would want to wait until it's even cheaper), etc.

The only condition needed for such scenerio is the critical mass of people reading Parish's Microsoft Financial Pyramid. I assume that Microsoft stockholders are smart people, not the kind investing in other pyramids.

If I was Bill G. & Co. I would hire Bill Parish for $100M/year as a financial consultant working at home and doing nothing, if he only agrees to stop publishing his reports. And if I was Bill Parish I would accept this offer...

Bill Parish's Microsoft Financial Pyramid is now on the first place in Google results when searching for Microsoft fraud. Just imagine if we all started linking to his article and it will became the first place when searching Google for Microsoft, just like the Anti-DMCA website is the first hit searching for DMCA. Something to think about. If this is true and if Microsoft is the greatest financial pyramid scheme and the greatest financial fraud of 20th and 21st century, then it would be really interesting to see it finally collapsing. Our granchildren will read books and watch movies about it.

Anti-DMCA dot org

The retail box model is horribly broken and will likely never be fixed.

We will never have our freedom until the DMCA is overturned. Better sooner than later - when the economy collapses because innovation has been brought to a standstill by stupid laws.

The DMCA means any programmer who can write a trivial encryption routine to "protect" (restrict) content can act as a legislator by making certain actions regarding that content illegal.

When a programmer can outlaw exercise of fair use rights to a piece of content - fair use rights become meaningless.

Isn't that an illegal delegation of power from Congress to those that write content "protection" (restriction) code? I think so.

Of course we can avoid their content - but that puts Linux at a disadvantage (people will cry "It can't play movies - unless you go to a bunch of criminal hackers and use (un-American) illegal software").

It is better than the SSSCA, which would at best seriously mess with Linux and at worst make it difficult or even illegal to run at all.

Please, Help Abolish The DMCA


The DMCA harms every American. It allows organisations and corporations to terrorize citizens of the United States with threats of jail time and fines for citizens, scientists and academians (a Princeton professor was threatened to not publish a paper) who perform math and science. The DMCA makes is a crime to "circumvent" copyright protection systems, on materials you bought and that you have a right to fair use of. Essentially the DMCA is a war on education. The DMCA, or Digital Millenium Copyright Act (United States Code, title 17, chapter 12, section 1201 http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/1201.html), can put you in jail for creating, using, or distributing software to playback the DVD's you legitimately purchased on a computer you paid for. It can put you in jail for reading electronic books you pay for without authorisation from the publisher! In fact, Dmitri Sklyarov was arrested and imprisoned for writing such a software program. It can put you in jail for making copies of music you purchased so that you can listen to it in your car.

The DVD consortium locks each DVD disc with a key, and then gives the key to manufacturers of DVD players. The key itself is a number. With this key, one can rightfully play the DVD's one owns on his equipment. However, the DMCA makes it illegal to speak about or distribute said number! It makes it illegal to do math and science. This is a flagrant violation of your first amendment rights, which reads "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."


Please, sign the Abolish the Digital Millenium Copyright Act: http://www.petitiononline.com/nixdmca/petition.htm l Please, write to your US senators and representatives and tell them you want abolishment of the DMCA. You can find out their mailing and e-mail addresses at http://www.senate.gov and http://www.house.gov


The DMCA harms every American. It was bought by organisations that want to be able to completely control what, when, where, and how often you use media--television, books, music, and movies. The DMCA is not a valid exercise of Congress's enumerated powers. It is unconstitutional. Please show your support to strike down the DMCA. Please forward this notice along to your friends, family and co-workers.


For futher information please see http://anti-dmca.org

I have a feeling they will use a combination of video watermarking and steganography to allow copyright holders to mark any video as their own. Of course, like sdmi, it won't last long.

Persuant to the DMCA, we probably won't ever hear about it. Maybe, we need to help these guys.

Adobe still needs to be punished for instigating the arrest of Dmitry Sklyarov. He's now free, but Adobe never paid his legal costs and still supports the vile DMCA. Is there any way to support Gimp development financially? Are there other free software applications looking for financial support that offer viable alternatives to Adobe's core revenue-generating applications?

I run a publishing company. On my web site I am going to place a policy statement about how the PDFs we sell won't ever have printing or text copying disabled, even though the DMCA makes all kinds of "fair use" restrictions legal. I'm not shouting on the soapbox, just doing my part to educate the public.

In this policy statement I wanted to link to a page describing what the DMCA is and why people should care about it. But believe it or not I could not find such a page. The only DMCA material I found was lengthy and tiresome, talking about Adobe and the Sklyarov case and blah blah blah... No one visiting my game company site is going to want to read pages like these:

The EFF's US vs. Sklyarov FAQ Page
Long, doesn't get to the point, doesn't even provide a quick link to what The Point is.

The Anti-DMCA Site
This is a terrible site. Right on the front page they ought to have a summary of their message, but there are just a load of links. Click on the Frequently Asked Questions link. There are no FAQs there, but there are FAQ links, one of which takes you to this FAQ page. Again, no one-pager on What is is and Why we should care. The closest thing is the What is the DMCA entry, which is a yawner, leading off with something about the World Intellectual Property Organization.

If anyone knows where I can find a well-written explanation of the DMCA that is suitable for the microscopic attention span of the typical web surfer, please post a link.

I run a publishing company. On my web site I am going to place a policy statement about how the PDFs we sell won't ever have printing or text copying disabled, even though the DMCA makes all kinds of "fair use" restrictions legal. I'm not shouting on the soapbox, just doing my part to educate the public.

In this policy statement I wanted to link to a page describing what the DMCA is and why people should care about it. But believe it or not I could not find such a page. The only DMCA material I found was lengthy and tiresome, talking about Adobe and the Sklyarov case and blah blah blah... No one visiting my game company site is going to want to read pages like these:

The EFF's US vs. Sklyarov FAQ Page
Long, doesn't get to the point, doesn't even provide a quick link to what The Point is.

The Anti-DMCA Site
This is a terrible site. Right on the front page they ought to have a summary of their message, but there are just a load of links. Click on the Frequently Asked Questions link. There are no FAQs there, but there are FAQ links, one of which takes you to this FAQ page. Again, no one-pager on What is is and Why we should care. The closest thing is the What is the DMCA entry, which is a yawner, leading off with something about the World Intellectual Property Organization.

If anyone knows where I can find a well-written explanation of the DMCA that is suitable for the microscopic attention span of the typical web surfer, please post a link.

Now is when the open source community should be working hard - to be ready to quickly launch an "open kazaa" type system, with the supernodes p2p searching and indexing, etc. The old protocol has already been reverse engineered. Its a proven protocol, and it works well enough. Just use that protocol and the old giFT client as a starting point.

All that is needed is a "keyless" client and a solid "Windows" version of the client. Why Windows platforms first? To paraphase the alleged Willie Sutton quote, "because thats where the files are". Remember, its the mass of users and files that make this work, so a technically solid and professional looking Windows client must come first, for maximum user gain. This is in additon to the usual and inevitable multiple Linux versions. The replacement client must be made to install and use the files and directories that already exist on the windows users' computers, and to use a similar user interface - so it is instant changeover, apparently seamless and painless - and it will look as if they never "left" the old p2p service except for the centralized login.

Finally, the forgotten element in the Open Source community, "publicity", must be revved up to get this client into the hands of a lot of people so it can be switched to as soon as Kazaaa/Morpheus et al are shut down. Linux users will take care of themselves, but the Windows herd usually needs to be led, at least initially. A question for the Slahsdot crowd,

How do you "publicize" things to the non-geek Windows crowd without a budget ?

Ok, nows the time to step up to the plate - this is a golden opportunity to put into place a open p2p net that cannot be stopped at a central source, that can permanently rip control out of the hands of central authorities for file-sharing, that will quickly adapt to overcome countermeasures, and a system that will make moot the DMCA and other US-centric bad laws. The question in front of the community now is:

Can Open Source people do things pre-emptively - plan and act in advance to scatch an itch we know is coming, instead of waiting for the itch to appear?

This is certainly a good test case to see if the Open Source community is what we enthusiasts always claim that it can be.

Anyway, FWIW, here is my reply to their request for comments (Cced to the dmca_discuss mailing list). Not that they'll take any notice of me, because I'm not a US citizen - but what the hell.

First, a bunch of movie props are a bit less important than the Constitution.

Second, it's already been auctioned off.

1. Back off on making various forms of tools illegal. This just makes it that much harder for the defenders.
2. Impose liability on networks that do not do egress filtering.
3. Oppose the SSSCA .
4. Fix the DMCA .

Support Slashdot and take a stand!

While you're at it... visit here too