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That's an interesting idea, but that would be radically different than how we have been doing things. Traditionally copyright has dealt with creating and distributing copies and some public performances or displays. It's not really about usage so much.

And that's why it's completely backwards to most people. Copies are becoming increasingly easy to make in this digital age, and for some products copies are even necessary. While "fair use" might currently be a defense against claims of infringement, I think a focus on usage instead of copies in a better direction. The whole word may be "copyright", but the important half is the "right", not the "copy".

So? Courts are perfectly capable of taking that into account. Check out the 110(5) homestyle exception sometime.

Again, that supports my point. They have to make exceptions every time novel technology comes out. It would be much better to redraft the law to deal not with the specifics of technology at all. Just because a CD gives up its bits more easily than vinyl records shouldn't materially change anything regarding copyright.

No it doesn't. The legal definition of a derivative work (see sections 101-103) is not the same as what a lot of people think it means. A derivative is more like adapting something to a different medium, non-slavishly and meeting the requirements of 102. Like making a movie based on a book.

It seems a lot more fuzzy than that to me. What, really, is the "work" when fixed to a digital medium? Just a series of 1s and 0s, as far as I can tell. If I take the series and and encode it to another series, what do I have if not a derivative? How else could the copyright holder of the original set of bits make a claim on the encoded bits unless they can show derivation?

More amusingly, hop on over to DataFetish and do a search. What can be said about the resulting bits when viewed in isolation? Can they really be said to represent any particular copyrighted work or any of thousands of possible encodings? That's why I say the copies, the bits, are irrelevant in a digital age. Focus on the right to use and things will fall in place a lot easier.

Math is interesting, math is fun, math is usefull, but math is not a sport.

Math is natural - math is good
Not everybody derives
But everybody should
Math is interesting - math is fun
Math is best when it's....one plus one
one plus one

Of course, by geeky implication from this, it's clear why George Michael liked 1+1. Most guys would instead go for 1+0, and really go for 0+1+0. Yeah! :-)

It can still be found on DataFetish. If you can, uh, find it there in the first place. :-) There is absolutely no way Apple will be able to erase all traces of this code from the Internet. The harder they try, the more people will secret it away.

. . . here

Note that it may be in a data superposition until you actually observe a page to decode into be the DeCSS source!

We only block two "categories" of content: sexually explicit and extreme/obscene

Are you sure about that? I think that is what the whole issue is (or should be) about. If you block what some software tells you to block, you run the risk of something being categorized incorrectly. For example, the DataFetish site is a bit (pun!) of a parody/free speech/individual rights site, but CyberPatrol has it listed under Adult/Sexually Explicit. A block may or may not be appropriate, but as porn?

But what I think is the absolute worst part about filtering is that it is completely "hands off". It does nothing to educate the children it imposes the restrictions on. Why not instead require adult supervision to surf the web? I'd rather see libraries put up a sign that said something like "This library uses a filtering mechanism for Internet content: your parent". Odds are little Billy won't be surfing over to Playboy if mom is sitting next to him, and he'd get a stern talking to if he stumbled across anything lewd.

Any packaged string can always be resampled from analog and move out into the wild.

This sort of thing is of great interest to me. The issues here are actually twofold. First is that some generic idea of "content" can be represented by multiple bit streams. Never mind resampling; how many different ways are there to encode a specific song? The combinations of different bit rates, different encoders, and different formats is staggering. Somehow, all those series of ones and zeros are going to be assigned (in theory) to the copyright holder? Maybe, but consider . . .

The second part of the problem is that a series of ones and zeros is meaningless without context. The decoding algorithm comes into play. What do you do if your nice new piece of software just happens to tar+gzip (or in some other way get encoded) into something that can be decoded, in whole or in part, by some music software to an mp3 of the latest manufactured band? It's like the illegal prime. Any laws that get passed regarding digital content without a lot of insight are going to leave things a real mess in the future.

The DMCA is so broken that it _is_ very possible to use it against itself.

I've been saying this for the longest time. What most people don't understand or care to understand about copyright is that they can be a copyright holder as much as big, faceless corporations. Any laws they use against you can be used against them. That's why I thought it was hilarious when I heard that they were going to make some hacking legal if it involved protecting your copyright.

In other words dream up a DMCA violation and then dream up a DMCA method for hiding or protecting the original violation. I bet some awesome examples exist.

All I can say is that the massive archives at DataFetish have yet to be the basis for any complaint or action. In some ways, it takes the concept to the extreme and forces you to acknowledge that binary can mean whatever you want it to. It is by giving data a context that it acquires meaning. In my opinion, copyright law and the DCMA don't even begin to get interesting until people start a fight over ownership of an actual sequence of ones and zeros.

It's pretty obvious you can't copyright a length 1 bit string, so how many bits do you need before you own it and I don't?

Ah, a man after my own heart (sorry, I don't swing that way :-). This why I started a Data Fetish web site, to explore the nature of the beast that is binary representation. So the interesting followup question to your is: for what arbitrary encodings can you make a claim of ownership of data? Just because you could claim ownership of a certain binary string, do you get to claim ownership of its inverse and reverse? The gzip and uuencoding? How may transformations could something go through before it overlaps some binary string that someone else would claim ownership for? The courts haven't even begun to deal with the stickiness of the issue.

Because, once armed with a decision in their favor, the DVD CCA can use it to strong-arm ISPs and individuals and intimidate them into taking down the information.

Actually, no, they can't. All they'll do is succeed it into more of a free speech issue. And I don't mean some legal, bullshit free speech issue, I mean a "My drunk skinhead neighbor is going on about niggers again, but I'm glad I know he's a racist" issue. Any such decision by the courts to stifle expression simply drives people underground. And nobody can do underground data quite like geeks can. Stop by DataFetish and try to find the DeCSS code. There are so many ways information can be encoded and obfuscated that the only effective legal decision is to completely take away all a citizen's rights.

ANYTHING that is digital will never be uncopyable.

While this statement makes sense, the reasoning

The reason is because you always know the parameters of how the digitizing is done. There are only so many ways that 1's and 0's can be put together (or taken apart) that make sense.

is very flawed. Copying isn't about the ability to "make sense" of data. A CD press doesn't need to figure out that one sequence of bits can represent music and other set can represent images. That is why most people make a distinction between copy protection and copy prevention.

Further, the "so many ways" that data can be [en|de]coded is actually infinite. I make a good deal of fun on this issue on my Data Fetish web site. The same data can easily make sense in more than one way based on different coding schemes, with my favorite example (to date) being the DeCSS prime.

". . . we would agree that the resulting composition of zeroes and ones would not convey ideas."
Conclusion:
Code == Free Speech
Compiled Code != Free Speech

This is a really interesting opinion for the court to give, and is behind the reasoning I used when I started the DataFetish site when the whole DeCSS issue got underway. When it gets right down to it, it gets tricky to say that a particular encoding (ASCII source) can in any way be considered free speech moreso than some other encoding (compiled binary) of the same "idea" on the computer. My take on it for the DataFetish site was to present documents with completely opaque encodings, so you just get back a bunch of ones and zeroes; meaningless without using a corresponding decoder.

The opinion seems to reasonably say that a binary sequence doesn't really represent anything unless it is decoded into something that can be considered protected. The double edge is that any binary sequence can be said to encode any kind of information; it's just a matter of the decoder having the proper algorithm to do the transformation. So (in theory :-) I could potentially have a copy of Windows XP up on the DataFetish site, it's just that you may not know which encoding I've used. If MS tries to circumvent the encoding to see if I have XP, they've gone and violated our old friend the DMCA. Ain't technology grand? :-)

Well, we've been testing the same "access control mechanism" defense on www.datafetish.com, and no lawyers have huffed down my door yet. It's not a closed system, but it is a double-blind system (we don't reveal what pages have what content, and we don't reveal what pages use what encoding). Afterall, who are we to say what a particular series of 1's and 0's mean? :-)

Instead of taking up the traditional "fight the power" battle, consider what can be accomplished by embracing the DCMA. My own little protest is up at www.datafetish.com, whereat I apply an "access control device" to various softwares (and I don't mean the index page; that's supposed to be satire). Now, unless you circumvent that access control device (thereby violating the DCMA), how do you know that what I have is actually what I say it is? I'm no lawyer, but it strikes me that just about any kind of encoding software format (tar, gzip, MIME) could be argued as being protected by the DCMA. I mean, where does the DCMA allow us to draw the line between the content and the presentation?

Hopefully this story is dead enough so that there isn't any Slashdot effect, but we've put a bit of that kind of thought into www.datafetish.com. We are looking to build a library of encoded, esentially anonymous information. Is DeCSS up there? Well, let's just say we didn't bother to put up the one that removes Cascading Style Sheets from HTML. But, like PAD, MIME, gzip, and all other software that does some form of encoding, it is possible some algorithm will turn the bits on some page into either one of the DeCSS programs, or maybe even the source code to Microsoft Office 2000. Who knows? :-)

That's just silly. Excessively broad patents need not concern applicants or employees. If challenged by enforcement of an NDA or Non-Comp, the company loses big when their patent is invalidated (it never should have been granted in the first place). They might drop the cash for a suit with some multi-billion dollar competitor, but they're not risking it because Joe Interviewee start working with ones and zeros at some other company.