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The DMCA defines "circumventing a technological measure" to mean avoid, bypass, etc., "a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner." 17 U.S.C. sect 1201(a)(3)(A)(emphasis by judge). Therefore, under the plain meaning of the law, circumventing a technological measure is only a violation of sect 1201(a) if the device allows consumers access to a work that they are not otherwise permitted to have.
.....
If this language of the statute were not enough, it is clear from the legislative history that Congress did not intend this provision to apply to devices that merely facilitated legitimate access. ..... The aim of sect 1201(b) was to restrict devices used primarily for piracy, and not those that facilitate legal use of products.

This:

Posted by michael on 10-26-04 16:45
from the morning-in-america dept.
EvanKai writes "Jason Schultz writes, "This just in --- Static Control Corp. has won its appeal against Lexmark over the right to produce after-market replacement cartridges for Lexmark printers." You can find a PDF of the ruling here and more about the case on EFF's site." It's important to note that the case is not even close to finished; this was just a ruling on whether Static Control would be enjoined (prevented) from selling their replacement cartridges while the suit proceeded. The original court issued an injunction, and the Appellate Court felt that Static Control had a good chance of success in court and overturned the injunction. The case will proceed and in the end, either side may win.

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 We need the law repealed before they stick the law in your BIOS and linux becomes and outlaw OS.

If you are considering donating to this cause and haven't yet given money to the good people at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, you could probably use a good priority realignment.

And I'm not a die-hard "Everything must be by the book!" type-a guy, but what's to prevent some a-hole, which this Arben does appear to be shaping up as, from abusing the hell outta the GPL by copying, stealing, and selling the source of a GPL project as their own?

Yes, we do have the world-renowned "Slashdot Effect", which may cost him or her a little with their hosting company, but what other ramifications does the average GPLer hope for in cases such as this (profiting from GPL'd code without giving credit or $$ to the actual creators)?

I suppose that if the problem were big enough, one might hope for some support from the EFF, and perhaps there's some other well-intending lawyers for the bigger GPL cases, but I see little to actually deal with some of guys like this. If I call up his local police, they'll be laughing at me all the way to the donut shop, not running over to arrest him and charge him with violating the GPL.

And the worst part of this, in my view, is that the average consumer isn't a geek, and so losers like this can still make money off them since they aren't privy to this "elite geek knowledge", as we obviously are. You and me can laugh tomorrow about how CherryOS is appearing to be every bit the fake that we all thought it was last week when it hit the boards, but the average guy who just wants to run that cool OSX on his $300 PC isn't going to be privy to this kinda news. So ol' Arben's still likely to make a nice bit of money off these people before disapearing with some easy cash (potentially, of course - There's no smoking gun showing that CherryOS is a fake yet to my knowledge).

So other than losing a few potential sales to us geeks, and getting a bad rap in the nerd pools around the world, is that all this guy can expect? Certainly the average GPL code writer's not going to have the knowhow or money to go after an anonymous name who could be anywhere in the world.

Does this kinda thing happen a lot? I can see where someone could likely get away with this and make some nice cash if they were to avoid very visible, and geeky products such as this. I mean... If I'm writing closed-source IVR software in Russia, and I just repackage a bunch of open source code as my own, what's the odds that anyone would notice? Now... Stealing a product as new, and with as big of "WOW" factor as PearPC takes some big balls, or a lot of stupidity, but for a lot of smaller, or less public projects, it wouldn't surprise me to find this was happening more often than people want to know about.

And for that matter, what's to prevent all the entepreneurs(sp?) out there reading this story from doing this? I can see at least one Slashdot reader going "It's just the GPL, and it looks like it's easy money! I'll just register me a fake domain, erase some copyrights and come up with a logo, and voila! I'm ready to start selling me my new Internet browser "FireWolf" for a nice profit"?

Sorry if this is a well known thing... I tend to avoid philosophic discussions on the GPL as often it's a lot of flaming, and little real knowledge, but this is a question I've always wondered, yet have never seen definatively answered.

EULAs and clickthroughs will not be invalidated in court as long as they are reasonable. The courts consider "reasonable" the ability for you not to use the software (or return it within a short period of time).

The case you are recalling (where the court explicitly defined what it thinks is reasonable) is probably Blizzard v. bnetd where the EULA preventing reverse engineering (among other things). The EULA was held up as a valid contract. There was no "first sale" involved at all per the above situation with software being licensed.

And as a side note; this shut down has effected the non-european sites far more than the european sites.

http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2004_10.php#00200 6

San Francisco, CA - Rackspace Managed Hosting, the San Antonio-based company that manages two Indymedia servers seized by the US government last Thursday, said yesterday that the servers have been returned and are now available to go back online. Immediate access to the servers, which host Indymedia's Internet radio station and more than 20 Indymedia websites, will be delayed so that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) can ensure that the servers are secure and take steps to preserve evidence for future legal action.

Now that the servers have been returned, the question still remains: who took them, and under what authority? Citing a gag order, Rackspace would not comment on what had happened both in the original seizure of the servers or their return. All that is known at this point is that the subpoena that resulted in the seizure was issued at the request of a foreign government, most likely with the assistance of the United States Attorney's Office in San Antonio. Although initial reports suggested that the FBI had taken the servers, the FBI has now denied any involvement.

The seizure, which silenced numerous political news websites for several days, is clearly a violation of the First Amendment. "Secret orders silencing US media should be beyond the realm of possibility in a country that believes in freedom of speech," said EFF staff attorney Kurt Opsahl. "EFF was founded with the Steve Jackson Games case fourteen years ago, and at that time we established that seizing entire servers because of a claim about some pieces of information on them is blatantly illegal and improper. It appears the government forgot this basic rule, and we will need to remind them."

EFF will take legal action to find out what really happened to Indymedia's servers and ensure that Internet media are protected from egregious First Amendment violations like this in the future.

A photo ID is biometric data.

That's really stretching the definition, but I did not used to have to provide a photo ID in years past.

I don't see how it's stretching the definition. There's nothing wrong with requiring biometric data on your driver's license, that's the point. But furthermore, the government isn't planning on including any additional biometric data on your driver's license anyway.

I suggest that you read actual information instead of wasting your time and mine with smart-assed answers.

I know all about the case, and I also know that the EFF are on the losing side of an awful lot of them. They'll sue over just about anything, like trying to get a law declared Unconstitutional just because someone sent someone else a nasty letter mentioning it. An EFF lawsuit means nothing.

England is a sovereign nation, not a state (those fireworks on July 4 are there for a reason) and Washington, D.C. is not "within a state."

A nation is a state. State: "A body politic, especially one constituting a nation".

Traveling to England is not "interstate commerce," so admit that your argument was flawed and move on.

I never said travelling to England was interstate commerce. Congress also has the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, though, as well as the power "to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States", such as DC.

What a crock. I smacked you down hard before and I just did so again. Unlike you, I provided specific information about multiple Supreme Court decisions and pending cases. The American Civil Liberties Union, The Center for Constitutional Rights and Privacy Activism, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and John Gilmore all have far more knowledge of the law than you. They maintain that the government-mandated requirement to present a photo-ID is unconstitutional. That carries a lot more weight than your virtual jumping up and down yelling "is not, is not, is not!"

We'll see who wins that case, I guess. While I respect the legal opinions of most of those you've listed (though not the opinions of the EFF), you have to realize they are all partisan, so they're not exactly looking at the law from a purely legal point of view. They're taking the answer they want to get and trying to figure out an interpretation which supports that answer.

without those protections the content providers will never let their precious content be broa[d]cast in HD and we'll all be looking at blank screens.

> in my town, the old horse & cart transports have died out too. Is this because of high-speed road
> access and a youth culture that uses some of the most sophisticated automobiles available?

And don't forget this parallel, covered here on slashdot.

Of course, everyone says "but it's illegal to download music" and it's not illegal to drive a car. This is true and it's even a valid point...

On the other hand, market dynamics can't be ignored here, and there is something fundamentally new here that needs to be recognized. The internet makes it possible to publish all kinds of information for free.

In the past this was not possible - for printed words, you needed a printing press. To publish music, you needed the equipment to make records or CDs. When cassettes became popular it became possible to make cheap copies, but cheap != free, and there was also degradation on every copy so it wasn't quite the same.

You don't have to think about it for too long to realize that the artificial scarcity imposed by copyright laws is not going to be very compelling to people. If my buddy is interested in hearing a song and I can send it to him for free, it's human nature to want to be nice to my friend and it costs me "nothing" to do it - why would I not oblige?!

If you want to argue about the morality of the issue, think about it this way... If my buddy was dying of hunger and I had a way to give him free food, would it be moral or immoral to give him the food? How much more abstract is it to fulfill the desire for a song? I don't think it's that abstract. Stallman argues the same thing one of his philosophy articles. Is it radical to want to please your friends, or is it simply human nature?

Lets say that you want to argue the morality issue directly.... "But you're depriving the author of their income." First off, I did not take anything from the author. The most that you can argue is that I have deprived them of potential income. We don't know if my friend would have purchased with a non-zero cost. In fact there is probably no way to know.

Secondly, lets say my buddy goes out and buys the used CD which is totally legal. The author does not benefit from this transaction either, yet somehow it's a morally "better" solution? That seems strange to me.

Thirdly, as a fan of someone's music, what action can I take that is better for an artist than to expose others to their art? It's hard to sell concert tickets, CDs, website memberships, or whatever without exposure. Up until recently exposure meant radio and MTV but technology is changing that. The question is how can the artist benefit from the change, not how to preserve the status quo?

Lastly, also from a moral standpoint, what did the publisher or record company do for my buddy? Nothing that he can put his finger on. Yet if he goes and buys the CD, they get most of the cash?! How many artists would be better off with a paypal button on their website that people could use to donate money directly to them if they like their music? I have no clue, perhaps most would be better off, perhaps they would die of starvation. I don't know how you answer that one.

In my mind, thinking all of this through, you come to a conclusion. The conclusion is that people who traditionally have made money publishing content are suddenly not producing products any more, they are providing a service. Think about the business models for open source and you see this. Apply the same logic to musicians (since their "product" can now be published at zero cost as well) and suddenly you see the new business model that works.

Musicians can derive their income from ticket sales. They could also provide some kind of value in memberships to their websites. (Disc

I'm the tech who had the contract with Rackspace. My blog has info about this, including copies of the rackspace trouble tickets:

http://jebba.blagblagblag.org

I'd like to clarify a few misconceptions I see in some slashdot comments (imagine that!):

daveschroeder wrote in comments (he also submitted this story to slashdot):
The bottom line here, for what it's worth, is that the US (or political agents within the US) had absolutely nothing to do with Indymedia's drives being seized, even though that's what 90% of the posters in the original article immediately assumed.

It is believed that it is the US State Department that had the drives (servers?) seized. You say the US had absolutely nothing to do with it? How about the Federal Order? Do you have info I don't have? Sounds very much like US agents are involved...

We do not know for certain whether it is related to Italy or Switzerland or somewhere else. It is a good guess, but still a guess. All we know is that it was a Federal Order from the U. S. of A.

ptitvert wrote in comments:
Indymedia was publishing some pictures of swiss cops under cover with 1 name, addresses from both cops.

Really? Did you ever see the post? I never saw a single name or address of a cop. There was just a newswire submission (very similar to a slashdot comment, except that it's multimedia enabled). See my blog and trouble tickets with rackspace for more info about this issue.

Also, folks write things like:
It could be a story they ran about the Swiss undercover police

Indymedia has feature articles and a newswire. Indymedia "ran a story about undercover cops" in the same way that CmdrTaco ran a story about your comments. Get it? FREE POSTING TO ANYONE WITH A FREAKING MODEM (npi).

Anyway, no one really knows what is going on, and that's the spooky part. I mean, the Feds just yanked the servers and never even contacted us once. And they still haven't. (Um, not that I'm inviting them over for coffee or anything...)

Look! They're just grabbing servers, no comments. This sucks folks, even if you loathe indymedia.

I know there is a lot of noise/spam/junk on indymedia, but there is on slashdot too... Since ANYONE can post, the posts are of greatly varying quality. But Indymedia has some of the best (if not the best) coverage from the street, especially at demonstrations. It does break news which is found no where else. It is extremely valuable for this alone.

Let's say there is a Swiss pharmaceutical company in Ohio that does something the Mexican cops don't like. Do the Swiss cops raid? The Mexicans? It seems we really have Team America: World Police.

The rockin' EFF has volunteered to represent me/indymedia pro bono. Very nice. :)

Have fun,

-Jeff

<a href="http://eff.org/IP/BBC_CMSC_testimony.php">ta ke a read of this</a>

<URL:http://eff.org/IP/BBC_CMSC_testimony.php& g t;

<a href="http://eff.org/IP/BBC_CMSC_testimony.php">ta ke a read of this</a>

<URL:http://eff.org/IP/BBC_CMSC_testimony.php& g t;

I asked them what the US government's interest was in Swiss police and French websites. They informed me that no law had been violated but they were just requesting on behalf of the Swiss government that the identifying information be removed. I clarified that their concern was with the identifying information, and not with the photographs, because taking pictures of someone in a public forum is not objectionable. They agreed with me and said that their only concern was the identifying information.

I asked them for the URL of the offending post. They did not know what a URL was. I asked them what the address was for the post-- "the address you would type into your internet browser." They looked confused, consulted their notes, and stated that they weren't sure, but they thought it was http://natz.indymedia.org (in fact, the correct address is nantes.indymedia.org). I informed them that it would be very difficult to track down the post considering that there are thousands of posts on indymedia sites everyday.

I told them that the Seattle Indymedia Center has no authority regarding the Nantes Indymedia Center and that they should probably direct their request directly to the Nantes Indymedia Center. They left.

I pulled up the Nantes site. On the front page of the site, at the very top, was a large logo of the FBI, and an article regarding how their ISP (Rackspace) had received a request from none other than the FBI to remove a certain post...

Nothing happened for a few days, and then today the server is gone. This is what we know for a fact:

• Rackspace received a subpoena requesting certain information.
• Rackspace decided to turn over our entire server.
• Rackspace has refused to provide a copy of the subpoena on advice of counsel (most likely because the subpoena contains a gag order)
• When we inquired of Rackspace, this was their response: "Unfortunately, we have received a federal order to provide your hardware to the requesting agency. We are complying at this time. Our datacenter technicians are building you a new server which will be online as soon as possible. Your account manager will notify you once the new server is online and available. I apologize for abruptness of this. However, we are required to comply with all federal orders of this nature. Please let us know if there is anything that we can do to make this easier on you."

Indymedia is working on a press release on this matter and is working with EFF to assess its legal options.

I love it, it allows me to be politically active and relatively lazy at the same time.

To be more correct. Search warrants were REQUIRED until a few years ago. Now warrants are no longer required and the FBI, CIA and your local police can just issue a state sanctioned "hush letter" and no-one is allowed to discuss the issue. Perhaps you might have heard of the all reaching anal raping law also known has the Patriot Act ?

Just in case anyone didn't see this as satire....

MPAA mistakes various free code in small zip files (all under 64k) as the movie "Basic" and television serial "Alias")
http://www.scene.org/showforum.php?forum=5&topic=4 0047

MPAA mistakes a file manager for X windows as X-Files movie based on television series.
http://lsolum.typepad.com/copyfutures/2004/09/dmca _iselfhelpi.html

ESA mistakes "INFMapPacks123FULL-MAN.zip" as Pac Mac video game.
http://gauley.ucs.indiana.edu/~cshields/dmca_lette r

RIAA accuses Penn State's Peter Usher of pirating music by rap band "Usher".
http://news.com.com/RIAA+apologizes+for+threatenin g+letter/2100-1025_3-1001095.html

RIAA admitts to "several dozens more additional errors" but won't disclose details. No direct link to Cnet coverage on May 13, 2003.
http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/20030926_unsafe_harbors. php#_edn2

Diebold intentionally files false takedown notice to silence (very well deserved) criticism of its shoddly voting machines:
http://www.corante.com/importance/archives/001465. php

Cult of Scientology attempts (yet again) to shut down xenu.net, which exposes embarrasing truths about their documents made public in a court case:
http://www.peerfear.org/rss/permalink/2003/02/04/1 044497702-DMCA_Takedown_Notice_Scientology_and_Pac Bell.shtml

Apparant con artist David Waathiq attempts to use DMCA threat to shut down critical website:
http://mdwaathiq.worldwidewarning.net/DMCA.aspx

.

To be fair, many of these aren't the MPAA (though at least the 2nd one is)... but there is definately a pattern of abuse. These are just the ones I found in 5-10 minutes of searching. It's quite likely there are many more out there, and many that go utterly unreported.

I think you are mistaken, have a look at the list of EFF victories for reference.

Follow the link to the legal documents. They are dated "October 14, 2004"!

I dontate to the EFF every year about this time, and you shoudl too! Is this not exactly the kind of issue that is near and dear to most every Slashdot reader?

So dontate whatever you can! Is some small portion of your salary too much to fight for digital rights?

I dontate to the EFF every year about this time, and you shoudl too! Is this not exactly the kind of issue that is near and dear to most every Slashdot reader?

So dontate whatever you can! Is some small portion of your salary too much to fight for digital rights?

While technically, not stolen, I just never paid the license fee to encode my CD collection to MP3 using LAME.

My hardware music player can only do MP3 and WMA, otherwise I would've used OGG.

Really though, it won't matter. If the Induce Act gets passed, we can kiss all of our iPods and similar devices goodbye.

Does anyone know of a Political Action Committee for IT Professionals, Computer Scientists, the Open Source movement, or anything along those lines?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, perhaps?

Apple supports DRM as a lock-in mechanism, not because of the RIAA

Don't kid yourself that Apple are good guys here. They are in deep with Hollywood on DRM, much deeper than MS is.

Unfortunately that is actually a terrible place to start. Ross Anderson is a well respected security researcher and has contributed to computer security greatly. (Security Engineering is a great book and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it.) Unfortunately his "FAQ" on trusted computing reeks of a knee jerk reaction. This *should* be obvious to anyone who reads it, since its incredibly light on actual facts about the TPM chip itself. He has since stated that he hadn't even fully investigated trusted computing at the time of writing the FAQ.

The EFF also has a more updated document on trusted computing, called Trusted Computing: Promise and Risk. As for Stallman's ideas... well, nevermind.. ;-)

Copyright collective as a solution to the music p2p problem is not a new idea. Downhillbattle.org and the EFF have been saying that Voluntary Collective Licensing is the ideal solution for quite some time already. Even The Recording Industry Ass. Of America could get a piece of that money, even though it should go mostly to the artists.

Copyright collective as a solution to the music p2p problem is not a new idea. Downhillbattle.org and the EFF have been saying that Voluntary Collective Licensing is the ideal solution for quite some time already. Even The Recording Industry Ass. Of America could get a piece of that money, even though it should go mostly to the artists.

That's silly. Kodak is just responding to the incentives in the patent laws.

Unlike SCO, their claims have legal merit.

Unlike Disney, they didn't bribe Congress to pass these laws.

Companies are supposed to respond to incentives in the legal system. There are tax laws designed to encourage firms to invest. There are laws to encourage companies to pollute less. Etcetera.

If you don't like what the legal system is encouraging, then lobby against software patents. Support the EFF, which is lobbying against software patents. Don't blame a company which is just trying to turn an honest buck (well, billion bucks).

ACLU's site is getting hammered; the decision has also been posted on EFF's site:

http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Surveillance/Terrorism/ PATRIOT/20040929_NSL_Decision.pdf

(EFF's press release is here.)

ACLU's site is getting hammered; the decision has also been posted on EFF's site:

http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Surveillance/Terrorism/ PATRIOT/20040929_NSL_Decision.pdf

(EFF's press release is here.)

http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/p2p_copyright_wp.php

You don't have to live in the bounds that are set forth in front of you. Saying that a battle must be conceded to fight another one lets your enemy (the government is the enemy in this case) gain ground on you. These battles are not over quickly, and freedoms should not be sacraficed to protect other freedoms.

Copyright is a misnomer. Everyone has the right to copy their property if they have the ability. It is YOUR property if it is on your computer or on a plastic disc you own. The person who created that has been granted a privledge to prevent you from copying that and distributing it to others. This privledge is enforced through the government. The point of what is known as copyright is to create progress in science and the arts. It should stop there. That is all the constitution grants. If you want more, amend the constitution.

I will not allow someone to tell me what I can do with my own property in my own home. If there is no financial gain on my part, no one is harmed. Even if there is, no one is directly harmed. It's the government's job to aid commerce and stay out of people's lives. There are proposals written by the EFF and others out there to create a system that fits both those goals to the best of the government's abilities.

This isn't an exhaustive write-up, but I glanced over some things I wanted to say. I just didn't like the fact that you wanted to accept the current copyright situation as the way the world was and that there was no way it could be changed without the end times coming forth. (Yes, I know, you didn't say that)

Interestingly enough, the EFF *wants* the government/music industry to tap how we use the internet when it comes to thier file sharing solution.

Where's ESR?

Where's Brad Templeton or other EFF directors?

Folks,

I would really like to get the bottom line on whether these HDTV tuners are Broadcast-Flag compliant. (Of course, I want the answer to be "no" to all.)

ATI HDTV Wonder
DVICO FusionHDTV III
Hauppauge WinTV-HD
Itech AccessDTV
MIT MyHD MDP-120
pcHDTV HD-2000
Sasem OnAirUSB-HDTV

I pressed and pressed ATI support for an answer, and finally got them to say it DOESN'T respect the BF. I'm just not 100% sure I believe them.

Does anyone know about these??? How do we get a reliable answer? The listings on the EFF page don't explicitly say that they don't honor it...

Tom.

From my understanding Japan has just recently (this year) made the change to digital TV. What I've read and heard though tells me consumers are not too happy with the DRM restrictions that have been put in place with the broadcast flags. Japan, none to happy with DRM The EFF has also released some docs though on how to make a homebrew digital DVR that doesn't respond to the broadcast flags and can still record the digital streams. EFF.org But so not only would we be taxed for the whole thing twice as has been previously stated, but the content that we would be forced to pay for would be moderated and controlled as well for what we can do with it. Frankly I think the whole U.S. has lost it's mind. What the government may have thought would help to ignite digital innovation, has instead helped to block end users in again and support the white collar executives instead. So remember kids when you go to vote this November, Congress has around a 90% incumbency rate...

Don't just stop buying things yourself. Convince other people to do so as well, and for god sakes, please support the EFF by becoming an active member.

It's quite obvious that the best way to be heard in the US government today is by founding or joining a large group which supports your cause, and the EFF is the group that we need to support if we want to see progress toward fair intellectual property rights.

It really is sad for IP and science in general when we have to go to court for a while to find out if we can make a garage door opener remote. The DMCA is possibly the worst thing that has ever happened to science in general. It lets companies be anti-competitive legally under a shroud of "protecting their intellectual property".

We all(I already have) should be going to the EFF's DMCA Action Page.

Contact your senators and representatives.(USA).

Chris

It really is sad for IP and science in general when we have to go to court for a while to find out if we can make a garage door opener remote. The DMCA is possibly the worst thing that has ever happened to science in general. It lets companies be anti-competitive legally under a shroud of "protecting their intellectual property".

We all(I already have) should be going to the EFF's DMCA Action Page.

Contact your senators and representatives.(USA).

Chris

bah i dorked the EFF link

broadcastflag not flat

also toms hardware review of ATI HDTV wonder might be of interest...

e.

The state of HDTV capture cards for the PC looks, cloudy and buggy =)

There's a few models out there (ATI HDTV wonder for example) but most of them just do OTA DTV ATSC stuff ( just when you thought I couldn't add in another acronym...) There's Fusion III card that was recently featured on /. that does unencrypted QAM for getting the HDTV off of *some* cable company's...

So you're stuck with either broadcast OTA DTV, a card that may or may not work depending on whether or not your cable company scrambles/encrypts their QAM, or cobbling together some sort of firewire type connection between your HDTV digital cable box and your PC (and as you read in the article their crippling those connections now, and next July all boxes will be hosed with broadcast flag )

I think our only hope is a CableCard compatible PCI tuner card. You could legally/legitimately "tune" HDTV digital cable right into your PC (hypothetically).

*shrug* that's my take anyways... I could be full malarcky =)

e.

http://www.1394ta.org/About/products/consumer_prod ucts.html

Additionally, the FCC is mandating that as of July 1, 2005, all digital cable set top boxes MUST include a functional FireWire port, and as of April 1, 2004, must provide a set top box with a working FireWire port on customer request. Of course, this doesn't help if content providers choose to encrypt the content.

Here's hoping we can fight the Broadcast Flag. Unfortunately, I can see a future where our kids think that the only way they can watch what they want to watch, when they want to watch it, and on the device they wish to watch it on, is by illegally downloading it from a P2P network, instead of being able to legally record it and move it around THEMSELVES with equipment THEY BOUGHT from a service THEY PAY FOR in their OWN HOMES.

Oh and don't forget that current HDTV capture cards will be illegal on 2005.7.1. Buy 'em now while you can. Future models will have to support DRM via a broadcast flag. :-(

Do me a favor- quit your job. I'm tired of paying you with my taxes and everyone else with what little income I have left.

Sheesh.

Last Christmas my G/F got me a Slashdot T-Shirt from Thinkgeek. (Yes I am a /.er with a GF) I wear it proudly (except on dupe days) and often times people ask me what the T-Shirt means and I get to share the wonderfulness that is Slashdot.

Today I donated to FireFox, actually I got one of the new T-Shirts and some stickers to put on my car but that counts right? It felt great. Sure it was a bit much for a T-Shirt, but I know that the profit is going to something I actually care about and I can only imagine how happy I will feel wearing that shirt around town, speaking the word of mozilla to all who ask about my shirt.

Next on my list to donate to is the EFF, and I think I get a nifty bumper sticker for that too.

I really want to donate to wikipedia, I use it all the time. I find myself getting bored, then researching something random on wikipedia, and an hour later I've got 50 tabs open in FireFox and I'm super happy. I just thought I would point out to everyone that Wikipedia has T-Shirts available at cafepress.com/wikipedia.

Ok, enjoy the rest of your day.

Remember, Vivendi Universal Games is evil.

One of the very best things I've read on the topic of antibiotic-resistant bacteria:

Bruce Sterling: Bitter Resistance

Public Knowledge may also be willing to assist with trademark issues.

The Open Source Law Resource center also carries information regarding law and open source projects, although it is generally for information regarding Open Source licensing issues.

Actually, this may not be as horrible as everyone makes it out to be.

I disagree. This isn't limited to just Microsoft. Take a look

• Microsoft pushes technological solutions to protect data (DRM) with "trusted computing" via "secure BIOS".
• RIAA pushes for DMCA-like laws that prevent circumvention of the aforementioned technological solutions by making it unlawful to do so. The RIAA has demonstrated that it is will not hesitate to use these tools to their advantage.
• The RIAA is using propaganda campaigns to indoctrine our youth and to gloss over the many concerns that we have for our civil liberties. Take, for example, the RIAA's blurring of the distinction between copyright infringement and theft.

So, you see, there's end-to-end lockout being put in place. If you happen to be smart enough to see through the bullshit, you can't do what you want because the technology stops you. If you happen to be smart enough to circumvent the technology, you can't tell others unless you want to risk going to jail. And even if you were some kind of law-savvy uber-hacker, do you have enough money to survive the SLAPP?

I'm not an alarmist, but come on, folks, this is alarming! Microsoft learned the hard way that their behavior isn't beyond the scope of anti-trust regulation, but they also realized that the government is too damn slow to properly stop them. I don't doubt for an instant that they won't use every competitive advantage available to them. Content producers also learned the hard way about fair use with the Betamax decision; don't fool yourself into thinking that they're going to let the Internet slip past them.