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Don't forget to pick up an OpenDVD T-Shirt from Copyleft too! $4 of each purchase goes to the EFF. Support the boys in the trenches and use that walking ad space to express your opinion, all in one fell swoop.

I love to wear one of my Linux shirts from Copyleft there is a small picture of Tux on the front, and a quote from Torvalds on the back: "The Linux Motto is 'Fear no danger.' Oops, wait, 'Do it yourself, that's it.'"

I was surprised by the reaction to the shirt, it went over very well even among non-geeks.

I had been looking for one with the following quote: "Software is like sex, its better when its free." I can't find one anywhere so I think I will have to make my own. (Do it yourself, that's it!)

Look at what has happened to DeCSS?
It has been forced underground which has effectively killed it.

You must know nothing of the Divx scene. Countless titles have been ripped and are out there if you can find them. (And it's only hard to find them because they're big, not because they're illegal.) DVD ripping software is advancing at an incredible pace; already there are DeCSS counterparts that are faster, easier and more compliant than DeCSS ever was. I don't see people in a hurry to mirror VOBDec or put it on t-shirts. DeCSS is, in fact, more popular than it would be without these lawsuits.

Why is that? Because DVD ripping is equated with piracy. DVD ripping software is equated with free speech; and by challenging DeCSS, the MPAA has pissed off a lot of people who wouldn't normally touch the stuff.

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RIDGEWOOD, NEW JERSEY -- Copyleft, an open source company that has made a significant effort to support the free software community with financial contributions financed through online sales of "geek chic" clothing, is poised to announce its new winter fashion line. Though no details are yet forthcoming, it is believed that central to Copyleft's new offerings is a blue cotton wedding dress with a thirty-foot train. When asked why, management denied comment except to mumble about needing more space to work with. Rumors of an apparent connection to Microsoft's recent break-ins and code theft remain unanswered.

Until the DVD-CCA stops trying to control who can and cannot play DVDs they have purchased, I suggest not purchasing a DVD player.

Instead, go to the CopyLeft store and purchase a DeCSS t-shirt ($15). $4.00 per T-shirt is donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

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Until the DVD-CCA stops trying to control who can and cannot play DVDs they have purchased, I suggest not purchasing a DVD player.

Instead, go to the CopyLeft store and purchase a DeCSS t-shirt ($15). $4.00 per T-shirt is donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

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Aeroplane tickets to Cancun during Hurricane Keith: $400

Fatso the Wombat on eBay: $80,450(AU)

Linux Inside sticker from Copyleft: $1

Modding Signal 11 down: Priceless


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Chief Frog Inspector

On Valenti: This guy is dangerous. During the first half of his "introduction" I was sitting back in my chair with a big smile on my face. I was thinking, this guy is a dinosaur. Noone in this young audience will buy any of his crap. But the truth is, unless you know A LOT about the issues (DeCSS, for example), he doesn't come across as THAT unreasonable (a little unreasonable, sure). The problem is, he makes only reasonable sounding statements (like he's "in favor of fair use") and when pressed into a corner he completely evades the question. He is 100% in favor of "fair use" but as some other posters have already pointed out, his idea of "fair use" is any use in accordance with whatever restrictions the owner of the copyright imposes. If the MPAA releases a DVD under terms which state that you can only view it between 3 and 8 am, then watching the movie at any other time would be using it unfairly. He never explicitly said this, of course, but this was the impression I got after reflecting on his statements regarding "fair use". I was also very disgusted with his repeated arrogant statements to the effect that the American movie industry is God's gift to the world.

On Lessig: I had never seen him before. I had very high expectations because of all the good things I had heard about him, but he fell a little short. He was very hesitant at the beginning. During his introduction I was worried that there would be no debate, since he didn't seem to disagree with anything Jack had said. Lessig was in friendly territory (with this audience) and he knew it - he should have gone for the jugular earlier. It didn't really get going until late in the debate when Lessig just interrupted Valenti and explained why intellectual "property" is not property. So although he built up his momentum slowly, he did land some powerful punches, and I'm very glad to have this guy on our side.

ps. Guess I picked the right day to wear my shirt

---------///----------
All generalizations are false.

That comment looks familiar... T-Shirt seen at Copyleft.net

And which selected part of the over 2,500 words would you like to name your little one?
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That's very interesting, since the shirt doesn't even have the key on it.

The "Got DeCSS?" shirt contains the keys on the back.

That's very interesting, since the shirt doesn't even have the key on it.

The "Got DeCSS?" shirt contains the keys on the back.

i wear the shirt to school and everyone looks at me funny. :)

Are you sure that's because of the shirt? I also wear the Copyleft DeCSS shirts to school, and people do look at me funny, but they seem to do that no matter what I wear.

For all we know, they already did...remember those subliminal messages that were found in DVDs? Maybe some fun-loving moviemaker decided to add one in....of course...we would have to use the code itself to find the code so....i guess you'll just have to do what i did and order one of the DVD shirts off of copyleft and get a full printout of the code with your order...i wear the shirt to school and everyone looks at me funny. :)

Serious about your frustration with the RIAA and corporatism in general? Try Civil Disobedience. No, really. Be willing to get arrested for possessing the tools we take for granted. I am. But read on...

First, a summary, since this is long and will get chopped:

• We can't win if we look like the bad guys. Therefore, we must clean up our act, both public and private, and be willing to address the real, underlying concerns of our fellow artists and consumers.
• Corporations don't trust individuals; individuals don't trust corporations. Therefore, we must gather all of the individuals together on our side, artists and consumers alike, instead of allowing the corporations to divide us.
• The future is change; everyone is scared. The industry is afraid, but also opportunistic. It believes it can secure a future for itself built by legally forcing nature to behave itself. It attacks the fears of consumers to create this legal impetus.
• The "Tragedy of the Commons" is worrisome. Individual artists are afraid that if they open themselves up to a meritocracy, they'll be raped. We have counterexamples, and we also need to set expectations.

Before you don your DeCSS Shirt, it's important that we get our act together and learn the very powerful art of spin . Don't sneer and say that's beneath us. Right now, the RIAA and MPAA are mobilizing a very powerful political engine. They are engaging in a classic tactic, painting our community's members as pirates and criminals in the public's eye. It's our job to spin right back at them, to recast the debate in terms that make us clearly the good guys, and them clearly the corporate Goliath, out to trample the rights of individual artists and consumers. Here's how...

Start giving props to artists. Start decrying the fact that there's no widely available, secure, trustable infrastructure for "tipping". Start pitting the labels against the individual artists, whom you would compensate directly, if there were a reliable means to do so. Blame the corporate hegemony for this situation. Traditional corporations exist for one reason alone: profit ; profit to the exclusion of all else, including the rights of artists, and the rights of individual consumers. Start pitting the labels against consumers, by using inflammatory phrases like "abrogation of our rights" and "corporate hegemony" (please understand what they mean and be able to defend them calmly, though). As soon as we can swing the focus of our fellow consumers' mistrust and cynicism to the industry, as soon as we can paint ourselves the David in this battle, we will begin changing things.

The reasons for this are simple:

• People root for the underdog. Right now, the RIAA and MPAA are painting themselves and the artists as the underdog against the massive, unstoppable tide of digital piracy and mayhem. As it happens, they may be right, but I'll get to that in a minute.
• People fear for their own property. People want to be "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects". The RIAA and MPAA are casting this debate squarely in terms of theft of property because they know that will strike a chord with the public. They want you, the consumer, to believe that, if you don't side with them to stop Napster and DeCSS, you'll lose out just as much as if someone broke into your house and stole all of your CDs.

My freshman year in college, someone stole 250 CDs from my dorm room. 250 CDs that I had worked very hard to afford, and had worked very hard to acquire (many rare imports, anime, etc.). I felt hurt, violated, confused, angry, and all of that. The RIAA and MPAA are trying to connect with those feelings in the consumer public.

We need to be going for the same connection, while also making the connection between individual freedom and liberty. We need to make it clear that we're all for just compensation, and that we don't need Goliath's hand to ensure that compensation. We need to show our fellow consumers that the industry is just in the game for the sake of revenue, and that they don't give a damn about consumer rights, nor do they trust consumers in the least. Yet they ask for our trust that they will justly compensate artists, that they will respect our rights to fair use, that they will treat us as equals (IANAL, but a corporation is legally considered a person.)

The RIAA and MPAA would have you believe that every artist and "legitimate consumer" out there is on their side, and that everyone else is a pirate. We know that's wrong, but what do we do about it?

Get all the individuals on the same side. Artists are individuals. Consumers are individuals. Everything in between the two is corporate infrastructure. The internet makes that corporatism irrelevant to the kind of relationships we could be building with our fellow individuals.

If I play your song, and I like it, I'll give you a tip. If I play it all the damned time, I'll give you big tips, frequently. If Metallica pulled their heads out, they'd understand that they'd make a lot more from me letting me tip them than they are right now, since I won't buy anything new of theirs (even though I really want to).

Things we've taken for granted, as a society, as individuals, and as corporations, are all in the process of changing dramatically and radically. Specifically, traditional notions of property become more meaningless with each passing day. We know how to treat tangible items as property (you're stealing it if you deprive me of it without my consent), but we don't know how to treat intangibles as property; after all, if you copy it from me, how are you depriving me of it?

And if you think that distinction is cut-and-dried, and that it just means we need two classes of property, intellectual and tangible, think again. What's going to happen in a decade or three when nano-technology makes tangible property available to anyone with a handful of garbage, a replicator, and a design?

Now, it's understandable that corporations might be afraid. After all, they might disappear. Or have to reinvent themselves radically. I think they're pretty well aware of that fact. The issue, ultimately, is one of control. The industry wants to control its destiny, but it doesn't have that kind of power. It seeks to create that power, artificially, by lobbying to create laws like the DMCA, that curtail individual rights that are far more powerful than they were when they were granted, 225 years ago, before there was an Internet.

I don't know about you, but I don't want to be controlled by a corporation. I want the freedom to interact with my fellow individuals, to share and communicate and transact by our own rules. I want to write code and trust that you'll compensate me for it justly. And I do. Literally. I have a 100% GPL clause for the work I do. And I trust the community and individuals to be faithful to one another, and to support one another. I don't need a law or a corporation to enforce what ought to be human decency.

The idea that some people will steal all the goodies is worrisome. They can't. Unlike the commons about which "The Tragedy of the Commons" was written, you can't trample up the grass around an artist. You can't turn a director into mud by copiously copying her work.

You can refrain from contributing to their livelihood. You can enjoy their work and simply not tip them, even though you can afford to tip them. Fine. We already have a really good term for that in place: cheap asshole. Perhaps we could get it made into a legal term?

Anyway, there are natural responses to the problem of the cheap asshole. The first is the pillory, metaphorically speaking. A good tipping infrastructure will allow you to leave your tips either anonymously or with credit. An advogato-like trust metric will allow folks to rate your generosity in comparison to your means. A well-deployed micro-accounting infrastructure will make artists, producers, technicians, and so forth, accountable for how they spend the tips in pursuit of their art. All of that means that assholes will be highlighted in red, and the object of public scorn.

This is as it should be, and there is a long tradition of such treatment. Read A Christmas Carol if you doubt me. Everyone hated Scrooge because he was... well, you know. A c.a.

The second is based on what I call "laws of information physics". The two fundamental laws of information physics are:

1. Bandwidth between any two points at any given time is a finite resource.
2. Information flows freely as long as there is available bandwidth.

These laws can be exploited to prevent the c.a.'s from propagating:

• First of all, imagine if you had to pay for bandwidth by your usage. Hey, if we're not relying on king corporation any more, someone's got to foot the bill for your 128Kbps chunk of the OC48 to gratefuldead.com. Thus, when you download directly from them, there's a mandatory tip of $.05/MB ($3.00 for a 60MB album). You'd still want to tip on top of that if you liked it; that was just to cover their connectivity. Of course, they may be popular enough, and get tipped enough as it is, to not charge that connectivity fee.
• Imagine if free file-sharing networks allowed you to hook into the aforementioned trust-metric, and determine based on that whether or not you would allow your server to send files to a c.a. Through literal peer-pressure, people would find themselves either tipping liberally, or cut off from the goods.

Such infrastructure can be exploited in a lot of other ways that bring back our ability to trust one another, and to build community even in the massive scale of the Internet and a global economy. People who've had hard times could "get a break." Or if you're a real hard-liner about people overcoming circumstance, you could set your own metrics to shun anyone who claimed hard times, or anyone who was rich without working for it, and not generous with their wealth. "The possibilities," as they say, "are limitless."

I'd recap, but you can scroll to the top for that. The bottom line is that we need to pay attention to the fears and concerns of our fellow individuals, and address those, and not just go spouting off about how we're going to do whatever we please and the industry can't stop us. We all believe the industry can't stop us, because ultimately, we can hide. But who wants to hide? And who wants a world in which sharing is a criminal act? So don't feed their fire. Help your fellow artists, consumers, individuals understand how we can build a better future together, without corporate hegemony.

And be prepared to get arrested in the meantime. But when you do, make sure you come off sane, rational, and reasonable. Make it clear that the man is putting you down. If you're not calm, careful, and likable, your fellow consumers and artists are going to see exactly what the RIAA and MPAA want them to see. And away goes your freedom and their freedom.

P.S. I'd have crossposted this to advogato, but I'm not certified by anyone as having done anything special. So if you're of a mind to, and have a decent cert there, please certify me if you think I can add value to the discussions there. Thanks.

They are already being sued.

If that is a direct link to DeCSS on your page, then you are guilty of breaking the DMCA. (Boo hoo, IMHO.) However, your professor did not link to your page for the purposes of distributing DeCSS code. Neither he, nor anyone else further up the chain, are guilty of violating the DMCA. To hold otherwise would be to be in violation of the "chilling effect" principle often cited in First Amendment cases.

While I have issues with the judge's attitude towards 2600 and the guy who wrote DeCSS ("if that's truly the purpose it was written for"), his arguments on the constitutionality of limiting linking are very, very well argued.

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Get your DeCSS protest t-shirt right here. One of the few remaining legal DeCSS links.

This Court has held that when 'speech' and 'nonspeech' elements are combined in the same course of conduct, a sufficiently importatn governmental interest in regulation the nonspeech eleemtn can justify incidental limitatios on First Amendment freedoms."

What if I post a greatly enlarged picture of the T-shirt on my site? Or maybe a link to such a picture?

-B
benjones@superutility.net

http://www.copyleft.net

Assuming that you cannot appeal, or that if you do appeal, you lose (NOT cheering for this to happen, obviously, but it IS a possibility), what possible action can the MPAA/DVDCCA/ take? DeCSS will still be out there, still be widely available, and so will DivX. Hell, the damn source for DeCSS is on a t-shirt, for God's sake!

IMO, they had lost before they started.

Email me.
Don't trust anyone over 90000.

I already have my t-shirt.

b&

EMP bombing still won't get rid of the T-shirts.

=)

What really saddens me is That people like mandrake and redhat and such throw Everything into their newest distributions and CALL it stable, and people believe it. Debian 2.2 is as good as stable, it's just being tested, and tested, and tested.

There's a shirt on copyleft that says "Debian: When code matters more than commercials."... That's one of the points of debian. if you go with a distribution like mandrake or redhat or caldera, you know, deep down (or at least, you should), that the only reason that distribution exists is that they want to make some money. That's why there's been the IPO's. Not that there's anything wrong with money, or making it, But i'd rather trust someone who is writing the code for his or her own use rather than his or her own pocketbook. Debian's there because we want to use it. Not because we want to Pay some carpetbagger who thinks linux is the next Big Moneymaker.

That's ok with me, except that they take too long between releases, and unless you want to break (!) your package
setup, you can't upgrade your samba, apache, etc.., or dpkg/apt-get has a hissy fit.

Ahem:

# cd /etc/apt
# cat sources.list | sed 's/stable/woody/g' > sources.list
# apt-get update
# apt-get dist-upgrade

That's never broken *MY* Packages before. That's one of the most common debian misconceptions. 'stable'/'unstable' have more definitions than just non-dangerous/dangerous. one of the meanings of 'stable' is "not changing" versus "constantly changing" for unstable. When debian releases a STABLE distribution, it means it's been tested, proven, and works beautifully, even if it's not CuttingEdge(TM!)... Many times "This is reliable, And well tested." is WAY more important than "This is the newest thing out there!" Think about it. which would YOU really want on an important server?

I'll stand by my debian, thank you.

Pick one (or both) up, it'll help support these companies, and It'll be a historically-significant item decades from now.

i've worn the "(dvd/cca)" shirt a few times, and it gets good reactions from my friends (geeks and socs alike). those who know the story enjoy the shirt and those who don't invariably ask and hear the "truth" (my undoubtably biased side of the story :7 ). i plan on buying the "got decss" shirt soon.

i've worn the "(dvd/cca)" shirt a few times, and it gets good reactions from my friends (geeks and socs alike). those who know the story enjoy the shirt and those who don't invariably ask and hear the "truth" (my undoubtably biased side of the story :7 ). i plan on buying the "got decss" shirt soon.

i've worn the "(dvd/cca)" shirt a few times, and it gets good reactions from my friends (geeks and socs alike). those who know the story enjoy the shirt and those who don't invariably ask and hear the "truth" (my undoubtably biased side of the story :7 ). i plan on buying the "got decss" shirt soon.

i've worn the "(dvd/cca)" shirt a few times, and it gets good reactions from my friends (geeks and socs alike). those who know the story enjoy the shirt and those who don't invariably ask and hear the "truth" (my undoubtably biased side of the story :7 ). i plan on buying the "got decss" shirt soon.

I was just about to go to CopyLeft and buy a shirt.. but if they get my name and address in their database, if the case DOES go in the MPAA's favor, can I now be named a defendant because I bought the shirt there?

Now, had Disney decided to make the entire movie a classical music feast with cgi visuals, it would have been both innovative and amazing. The reason that they did this is very, very simple: you can't market class and good taste. A talking Dinosaur sells, a Classical music epic does not. While I would take my kids to a viewing of The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, or Aladdin, I know that if I took them to the original Fantasia, they would be both bored and annoyed (or annoying..). The reasoning behind this is because children (and the vast majority of all adults and adolesents) today are media slobbering brain-washed babboons that not only don't want something better, they don't even realise that there COULD BE.

• GNotgnU.gnu

...linked of course to...

• gnu.gnu

Hmmm...that reminds me to pick up a t-shirt

This one is even better... :-)
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If you go check out Gnotices, you will see an interesting, seemingly unrelated article: The XMPS project has just released a version which supports DivX decompression... by using a MS-Windows DLL. XMPS is a GPLed Gtk+-based MPEG player. It is a GPLed app which uses a proprietary library. The licence makes no explicit exceptions. Sound familiar? Now read the Gnotices. See anyone complaining? I don't. Everyone looks thrilled. Somehow, I'm not surprised. Slashdot posters would react the same if the news got here. This is a Gtk+ app, after all.

I personally feel there is nothing wrong with what the XMPS project is doing. I actually applaud that clever trick and what it allows for users of free systems. I know my free software history: Emacs and GCC were born on non-free systems. They did what they could with what they had. So does XMPS. So does KDE. Hopefully, the situation will someday improve. But in the meantime, the people writing the GPLed code are the good guys and gals... Remember? (I guess not.)

But of course, anyone writing GPLed code and linking it against Qt is a GPL-badmouthing, uptight, arrogant, crack-smoking, gay devil-worshipper. Hundreds of posts and e-mails will tell you that. And I'm not even kidding about the "gay" part, which you know if you have read the comments on Freshmeat. When I see how such troll posts about KDE consistently get moderated up to +5 Intersting, I start looking for the button which allows me to moderate *all* of Slashdot down.

I would trolling if I did not have a point.

PS: I bought a Gnome T-shirt from Copyleft just so Gnome and the FSF would get a donation. Think about that before you write me off as an anti-GPL bigot.

We use the unrelenting capitalism of our society to define ourselves by.

Right when I was about to buy all this stylish merchandise, too. :-)

...for one of the big companies making money to put some back for something like legal defense. Now what about VA? Andover? Penguin? etc.?

I contributed to the DeCSS cause by buying a T-Shirt with the decss_descramble code on it. It's nice to see someone with deeper pockets helping out too.


Who am I?
Why am here?
Where is the chocolate?

i believe www.copyleft.net is selling t-shirts w/ the actual source written on the back. www.copyleft.net

Personally, I've always prefered the New York Times over other national newspapers (read McNews), now I have more reason to love the paper. This is the type of Journalism we need to see more of, unbiased, fair coverage of both sides of the story. It sure beats my local paper's "MP3: Local Students Stealing Music Online".

My Prediction: The NYTimes is fond of freedom of the press. Their defiance of the MPAA will lend legitamacy to the OpenDVD cause.

Mirror DeCSS on on a T-Shirt.

undersized? don't you mean OVERsized shirts?

try shinymonkey, thinkgeek or copyleft.net (.com?)

This was the T-shirt I was wearing today. What a coincidence :-)

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Dude, it's been done. Check out copyleft.

Slashdot is a great place to rant about the issue, but believe me, everyone on slashdot knows about it and is fighting it in their own way. The best thing you can do is actively pursue this issue in your local community. Get the flyer from 2600. Tell your friends. I have been wearing my CCA shirt from copyleft and getting lot's of questions about the issue. The EFF is also helping us fight this, what we need to do is come out of our "caves" and tell the rest of the world about this issue (as all they know about it is the lies the news feeds them).


Munky_v2
"Warning: you are logged into reality as root..."

Correct link
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Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right.

Copyleft has this one.

Copyleft has this one.