Slashdot Mirror

Sax Maniac writes "There is a story on Yahoo! that reports on a new study that says Napster cuts into record sales. " It'd be a more informative study if the study also included the fact that a huge number of college students buy their music online now, which would also drive down sales in the local area - looks like a piece of FUD in MP3 War.

Update: 05/25 12:08 by michael : I can't help but jump in with a link: Pirates Steal Negative $1,400,000,000 from Music Industry.

ferlatte writes: "There's a great piece on the effects of the tech industry in Silicon Valley on the environment and their workers. Pretty scary stuff, and sort of unsettling to think about how many toxic substances went into that shiny new laptop. The story is available at http://www.sfbg.com/News/34/30/siliconhell.html." Maybe the industry needs to set up "PolluteE", a "watchdog" agency to make sure companies post their pollution policies prominently on their Web sites...Update: 05/04 11:08 by michael : A good link from the comments: the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition.

A discussion follows on why the messages in "Voices From The Hellmouth" should be published as they are, and why they were chosen. These messages were meant to be heard. They are the right ones. They shouldn't be edited, excluded or silenced, especially not here. (By JonKatz & CmdrTaco)

To me, the moral imperative of the Hellmouth series has always been simple: get these stories out to a wider audience. That's what they were sent.

There are countless victims of a tragedy like Columbine. First, and certainly foremost, there were the 12 kids and a teacher who were slain. Secondly, there were the two emotionally disturbed kids who killed them, and then took their own lives. And finally, there were the many thousands of individualistic, interesting and sometimes-alienated kids who have suffered from the post-Columbine hysteria.

Their stories are familiar to anyone who read the Hellmouth series, or who has been following the epidemic of suspensions, expulsions, arrests, forced counseling sessions, social abuse and suspicion, and nightmare creations like Pinkerton's "WAVE America" program, an anonymous hotline on which kids are encouraged to turn in peers they consider dangerous or violent.

In the days after Columbine, many of those new victims sent messages to Slashdot, in the hopes of finding an outlet for their experiences -- since schools, the media and politicians were giving them no voice. We can't count exactly how many messages were sent this way, some posted here, others e-mailed directly to me, while many messagers were unable to get onto the site. But my best guess is close to 20,000.

In a handful of cases, posters asked for anonymity, or that their messages not ever be passed along. Those requests were, of course, honored. But as perhaps the only person who read all the messages, that got through, and that I received, I am confident about their spirit and intent, both literally and figuratively. Those people wanted to get their stories out. They sent their messages in the hopes of reaching beyond their own lives and schools and into mainstream media, educational and political circles. The Hellmouth posts are unique. They belong in the public domain. In fact, they cry out to be there.

The overwhelming majority of these kids and adults came from outside of the Slashdot community. They perceived Slashdot as a place where messages get out, where they could speak freely, where information is shared and distributed. They asked that I do everything possible to see that their words and perspectives and pleas and stories reach journalists, educators and parents. None of them were particularly aware of or interested in the many internicine issues and conflicts that characterize a site like this. They were not conventional posters to Slashdot's Threads.

So I have worked to be faithful to those requests. In these kid's lives, a year is a long, sometimes painful time. Lots of these kids have stayed in touch. Many have moved, gone on to college, switched computers or ISP's, changed their technological lives or personal interests. Many, of course, were young, complicating the posting issues still further.

Although I didn't select the messages in this about-to-be published collection, (Since I am legally under contract to another book publisher, I couldn't directly participate in the production of the book, and I also thought it would be better to have a more detached eye) I've read them. The selections were brilliant. They are the right ones, and they are powerful.

My belief and recommendation was this: the safest, fairest and most effective way to deal with publishing excerpts from the outpouring was to select the most powerful and universal posts, strip them of identifying name or e-mail addresses (some of them are young, some messages to them might be intercepted by parents or siblings, and the Net can be hostile) and publish the strongest, most representative excerpts. To do anything else, in my opinion, would be arbitrary and unfair, because:

- Messages shouldn't be excluded just because the posters were young, or had moved or switched ISP's.

-Messages should be chosen for their content, not availability.

Inclusion in the book shouldn't be part of a negotiating process, but on the basis of merit.

-All of the posted messages -- including some e-mailed to me -- were clearly sent with the intent of being seen. People wanted to have some impact on the post-Columbine hysteria.

Many people in this community have raised all sorts of questions about my motives (the accusations included profiteering, self-promotion, exploitation, opportunism, among others), and about idea ownership, and some proprietary questions about including posts. Many of these concerns are perfectly valid, others ironically coming from people who routinely download music, videos, software and other information and pass along opinions, columns and stories without a second thought, or even as a matter or principle.

Fact is, I've never been prouder to have my name on any book. I hope it's published in a timely fashion. I hope it's supported and widely read.

One of the problems with the eruption of hate-mail Friday (I define hate mail as a message with the word "hate" in it, or a message sent for the sole purpose of personal attack or injury) is that it often obscures genuine issues, and the posts that raised intelligent and important questions. That was the case in the response following the announcement that "Voices From The Hellmouth" was going to be published.

These issues, while valid, raise the risk of obscuring the point: The Hellmouth messages urgently need to be disseminated; they deserve to be heard. Don't do to these kids what so many journalists, administrators, parents and others have done -- shut them up.

Where possible, it's perfectly valid to try to reach individuals and get their permission -- believe me, that will not be a problem. In every case, e-mail addresses should be stripped and only the poster's initials used. But messages ought not be kept from the book simply because a poster was unreachable. These messages are the right ones.

That unrelated issues ought not delay the publication of the book by a single day, or result in the deletion of any valid message. Nor should they divert attention from what the Hellmouth series is really about -- the very real persecution of kids who are individualistic, different, "non-normal," and who have been wrongly caught up in an ugly hysterical response to a tragic event. These voices should not be silenced, and certainly not here.

Addendum by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda

I wanted to make a few points in addition to Jon's.

• A terrible thing happened a year ago. Then the world freaked out and caused even worse things to happen to even more people. Everyone involved in the production of this book felt that this would in some small way help. You're not obligated to buy, read, or even care about this book. But there are many people who hopefully will benefit from it.
• It was impractical, and in fact undesirable to contact and credit the vast number of contributors. Under other circumstances, it might have been different, but considering the subject matter, we felt that it was better done anonymously anyway. If we were publishing the 'Slashdot Readers Guide to Hacking C++' or something, much different criteria would have been used.
• We're donating any money to charity: we'll certainly entertain suggestions about which charity, and perhaps it'll be put to a Slashdot poll, all of that however was just a nice side benefit to a larger purpose. Accusations that this is a PR stunt were pretty hurtful. We honestly feel that this was above all else, a "Good Thing". Yes, we did it through a Andover, a corporate, "For Profit" entity, but that alone doesn't make turn this into an evil plot to take your money, and earn us fame. Turn the conspiracy theory down a notch and remember that Andover just a group of human beings with real feelings and everything. Several of them were very hurt that so many people reacted so angrily to something that we all felt was good.
• We're in the middle of a big server move. After that we'll hack a permission system to allow people to decide if their words are for Slashdot only, or may be redistributed if this ever comes up again. There are many good things in the comments worthy of wider audiences, and most readers don't have any problem with that, but the few (loud) people for whom this is a major stumbling block should most certainly be allowed to determine the destiny of their own words. It has been my intent to add this for months, but ideas are plentiful, while the time to code them isn't.
• It will be published electronically. It'll be run either on Slashdot, or it'll be in some downloadable format. Its just not out yet, so chill out for a few weeks ;)

Extra-special bonus addendum 04/21 16:24 by michael : Already the jokes have begun.

GlitchZ28 asks: "It seems to me that the problem with Internet filters is their blanket approach searching for words in pages, URLs and of course the ole blacklist. It's the same as WWII blanket bombing. Drop 500 bombs at one target and chances are you'll get it (along with a lot of things that weren't targets). Has anyone considered starting a little project to create a simple, very easily modified open source Internet filtering program? Allowing library officals to decide what tactics would fit their needs such as a blacklist of the the obvious porno sites. I really wouldn't mind a filtering system IN public libraries if it could be scrutinized BY the public and then changed."

If we must censor content on the Internet, I would feel better about it (but not much) knowing that the censorship was done by the people rather than some bureaucrat in Congress.

Comment by michael : Many anti-censorship folks have been pushing this line for a long time; that the blacklists used in public institutions should, at the minimum, be open for public inspection. This would, no doubt help cure some of the more egregious errors. But the above poster is making an error in his reasoning. Computers do the searching because there is no other way to do it - you simply cannot categorize hundreds of millions of pages by hand, period, end of sentence. And an algorithmic approach can never fully characterize the range of human expression present on the Web - even assuming, for the moment, that you could get people to agree on what should or should not be censored, there's no way to make rules which will pick out those pages with 100% accuracy, or even anything close to that. Doing so would require the development of true artificial intelligence, which isn't even on the horizon. Calling something "open source" or not doesn't make it magically able to achieve a breakthrough in artificial intelligence. When you add in the fact that with three people in a room you have four different opinions on what should and should not be censored, it should become clear that throwing an open source label at something is not going to result in an easy solution.

mowa sent us a link to the one of the latest interviews on sendmail.net. This time around they're talking with Bruce Perens, concerned primarily with the issue of patents. The interview uses Amazon as its example of patents gone awry - nothing much new here, but yet another perspective on the whole issue.

Update: 02/16 11:40 by michael : A while back, we received a submission that never made it into a story of its own, but will fit nicely here. Bryce wrote: "Several of the WorldForge developers, impressed at the quality of comments on the patent story posted a few days ago and wanting to see those comments preserved in a useful form, edited all of the replies into a useful, readable set of documents. The article is most definitely, "Written by Slashdot, For Slashdot". Many of our team members put in a few hours each sorting and summarizing, in the hopes it'd get some good press for WorldForge."

We've mentioned the Borland/Inprise Linux Developers Surveys before. Kinda like the The Linux Counter, it's a way for the needs of the community to be codified and show the corporate folks that we really do count - in numbers and in skills. So, check out the latest survey and we'll probably post the results in a few weeks.

Update: 02/15 01:46 by michael : Readers will notice that one of your fellow readers is abusing the system. Take my word for it that CmdrTaco is well aware of the situation and is preparing to Take Steps. It is frankly a shame that Slashdot's loose authentication system which is designed to allow people to participate without providing your name, SSN and mother's maiden name like so many other forums is also subject to abuse. Fixes are at hand in the very near future, so don't e-mail, don't call, don't post complaining that Slashdot is going to the dogs -- we're on it. Well, I'm not on it, but you know what I mean. :)

ScUmM_BoY writes "Someone had enough spare time to create Textmode Quake for Linux. It was the Link of the Day over at User Friedly, and the Web page includes some (blinding) screenshots. Keen!" I really don't know what to say. I am aghast. Update: 02/12 22:19 by michael : Okay, okay. So it was posted to Slashdot a year and half ago. It's still cool.

J.t.Qbe writes "The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that Northwest Airlines has begun searching home computers belonging to some of its employees for e-mail evidence that the employees helped organize a 'sickout' over New Year's. Scary stuff. Still eager to take that 'free PC' from your employer?" The best quote is from a corporate lawyer who redefines commercial speech to be speech about a corporation rather than speech by one: "Business speech is not subject to the same protections as political speech," said John Roberts, a Minneapolis attorney who specializes in cyberlaw. "You can't say whatever you want about a company."

Update: 02/09 20:41 by michael : Some slashdot readers are not reading the story before commenting. The computers in question are the personally-owned machines of their employees. The company is fighting the union in court, and obtained a court order to search the personal property of these people who are not even union officials.

gatech writes "After hitting Yahoo yesterday those crackers set their sights on several more sites including CNN.com, Amazon.com, and eBay.com. Here is the story at ABCNews.com."

Comment: 02/08 23:26 by michael : So far, the best explanation I've seen for the massive network problems is here. Is it paranoid to note that we're being hit with unprecedented attacks, with no known motive, at the same time as the government is pushing for yet another expansion of their surveillance powers? People are focusing on how it's being done. Nobody seems to be asking who.

Peter Norton went to town investigating LinuxOne's curious "LinuxMac 0.9" product that was being distributed at LWCE last week. He and C Scott Ananian poked around it and wrote a report that I've attached below. Its essentially an RPM that contains a KDE Based GUI wrapper for hformat and kfm. Read the article (and could someone post a screenshot?)

The following was written by Slashdot reader Peter C. Norton

Scott Ananian (cananian@mit.edu) and I have been working with the LinuxOne "LinuxMac 0.9" product here at LinuxWorld Expo to figure out what's going on with the product, what it is, and whether there is value in their product. Scott was particularly interested and well informed about Macintosh hardware, since he works on maintaining the part of the kernel that supports Linux on Mac 68030 hardware (the old mac se/30, some the mac ii's, etc.).

In a way, we're following up on the information at: this page.

You'll see an assertion from a representative of LinuxOne that the LinuxMac product is a result of proprietary technology developed in a prior business by a company owned by the founder of LinuxOne. I can conclusively assert that based on using the pre-release of this product that this is currently completely false. Also, the program claims to be version 1.0, though the floppy says 0.9.

First of all, the floppy that they are selling to users contains a single RPM package, whose contents are as follows:

/root/Desktop/LinuxMac.kdelnk
/usr/local/bin/CLFormatter
/usr/local/bin/CommonLink
/usr/local/bin/cl
/usr/local/bin/cm
/usr/local/bin/hformat
/usr/share/common-link/linuxone-logo.bmp

The main program is CommonLink. Notice the "hformat" command? That's the utility that comes with the HFS Utilities that LinuxOne's representative claimed isn't even on their development network. However:

[root@col /root]# /usr/local/bin/hformat --license

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
[root@col /root]#

There isn't any source code on the floppy, though, and I expect to be talking with LinuxOne about this.

Anyway, the CommonLink application itself is a KDE-based gui that talks launches a mounting application or a formatting application. Each one gives you the option to do these things with a "Windows 95" "Mac" or "Linux" option. The mounting application has no logic internally to mount any media. It calls the system-standard "mount" utility. Scott and I have confirmed this - there is no possibility that we're wrong about this. After mounting the floppy with the mount command, it invokes the KDE File Manager, KFM, to present the floppy to the end user. Conclusion: they wrote a very small gui in C++ to invoke standard utilities.

The second utility, the formatting program, calls the standard linux fdformat utility (a low level formatter to prepare a floppy for any use), and then it calls hformat to put a mac filesystem on it.

If a "quick erase" (ala the windows formatting stuff) is done, then it just runs:

hformat -l MacFloppy /dev/fd0H1440

Though if you put s space in the name after -l it breaks (a beginner's programming error).

Conclusion: This is just another simple gui which uses utilities which are not written, maintained, or contributed to by LinuxOne or its staff.

In short:

The LinuxMac product contains no proprietary technology. It relies on standard linux kernel modules for filesystems (confirmed through testing), and it relies on standard system utilities to access floppies (again, confirmed through testing).

In addition, the utilities are only useable by root. There is no way a user could use these utilities to format or mount a floppy without the root user making changes to the system.

Please let me know if you're interested in the details of the testing, or if you have any other questions.

This week's interview guest, Jon Lech Johansen, has been all over the news (and all over Slashdot) lately. He's the guy behind the whole deCSS thing. Jon has been getting interviewed all over the place, but I'm sure you have questions for him that the "straight" media people would never ask. So go for it! One question per post, please. 10 - 15 chosen questions will be forwarded to Jon Tuesday, and his answers are scheduled to appear Friday.

Update: 01/31 14:52 by michael : Several people have pointed out that LinuxWorld ran an interview with Johansen today. So, rather than repeat the same questions that LinuxWorld asked, people should check out that interview and see what questions they still have about the situation...

Christianfreak, one of the two people not to submit a new lawsuit today, writes "My boss pointed me to a website describing a new technology that will allow people to add scent to their web pages or email. The site claims they use Java and a better understanding of the human genome to create scents through a device called the "iSmell"." These folks appear to be serious. The mind boggles. Will people start complaining about overuse of the <STINK> tag? All right, a slashdot contest: name some internet experience (including URL if appropriate), and the smell that should accompany it. Funniest entry gets a slashdot t-shirt.

Update: 01/23 10:20 by michael : Okay, I've selected a winner. An honorable mention goes to comment 26, the perfect amount of shock value. But unfortunately, not funny enough to take the shirt. However, the comments following it are extremely funny. :)

But the first comment to make me laugh out loud was this one, with pirated smelz and snifz. Maybe I've just been reading too much about the RIAA and mp3's lately... Congratulations to the user known as Tim Behrendsen.

This afternoon, Robin Gross from the EFF called me with some disturbing new information for anyone interested in DVD litigation. The MPAA has filed two lawsuits against three defendants in two separate states for the "illegal hacking of the DVD encryption system 'CSS'." The plaintiffs in the case are Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, MGM, Paramount, Sony Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Universal, and Warner Bros.. UPDATE: The complaints are available online. See below.

In the words of MPAA CEO and President Jack Valenti in a press release from the MPAA:

"The MPAA is striking a blow today in defense of the future of American movies. We have filed suit in federal court to stop internet hackers from distributing the software designed to circumvent the encryption technology that prevents the unlawful copying of DVDs."

"This is a case of theft. The posting of the de-encryption formula is no different than making and then distributing unauthorized keys to a department store. The keys have no real purpose except to circumvent the locks that stand between the thief and the goods he or she targets."

Later in the press release, he goes on to state:

"The U.S. movie industry intends to defeat anyone who steals our intellectual property. We are determined to defend the technology that protects artists and intellectual property holder rights... If you can't protect that which you own, then you don't own anything."

Robin offered her comments on this new litigation:

"Clearly, this is how they're trying to portray this. Piracy is their story, and they're sticking to it. Of course, this is a sneaky underhanded attempt to undermine the litigation that they've already filed in California, most likely because they lost at the temporary restraining order hearing. They realize the weaknesses in their trade secrets claim, an so they've decided to file under federal copyright, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. This is also an inappropriate harassing lawsuit, because although the DMCA does provide for a general ban on circumventing technological protection, there are explicit exceptions to that general prohibition for the purposes of facilitating interoperability and computer security, among other exceptions. They've realized that their trade secret claim is not going to prevail, so this in Plan B. Quite frankly, this is what we were anticipating the first time around. We were not anticipating a trade secret claim, because it was so weak."

For those following the news about the DVD CCA lawsuit, this new litigation shows us that this matter will take a very, very long time to work itself out, currently with no end in sight. It appears that in this case, the MPAA intends to blur the line between hacking for interoperability and the intent to distribute until it's no longer recognizable.

This is all rather puzzling. From a Showbiz Today segment aired on CNN on January 11th, Jim Cardwell from Warner Home Video said:

"We expected the source code to be broken. We were surprised it wasn't broken earlier. We believe there is no economic incentive to hack this product. The cost of the blank is more expensive than the cost of the finished product, and the amount of time it takes to download is several hours. There's no real economic incentive for anyone to hack this product."

When the topic of DVD writers came up, went on to say:

"Certainly, all the copyright holders, all of the studios, all the rights holders, are not going to sit still to see that -- to allow this to become rampant. We are going to continue to protect our products."

The issues of interoperability and the right to distribute free software are key issues in the Open Source community, and they always will be. How far will the MPAA and the DVD CCA go? One thing is for sure; no matter how long or hard they're willing to fight, the Open Source community will be there to meet them every step of the way.

Update: 01/15 21:31 by michael : John Gilmore adds that the complaints are available online at http://www.mpaa.org/dvd/content.htm. The links are slightly wrong, though, so you'll need to encode the spaces in the URLs:

• FILM STUDIOS BRING CLAIM AGAINST DVD HACKERS IN FEDERAL COURT
• Connecticut Claim
• New York Claim

...and even after you've done that, you'll still need to View Source on the New York page, since they didn't close a TABLE tag. Anyone named in these suits as a DEFENDANT should contact the EFF (Robin Gross, above) as soon as possible.

And while I'm at it, adric submitted that Copyleft now has t-shirts with the CSS-descrambling code on them. Part of the shirt's price gets donated to the EFF! Buy one now, it's the most painless donation you'll ever make.

Carl Brewer writes "Looks like the US is finally opening the gates." ...with this announcement from the Department of Commerce. Well, if you believe the draft of the new rules, supposedly just about anything will be okay to publish, including source code. Me, I keep thinking about Lucy, Charlie Brown, and the football, but maybe I'm just a cynic. Update: 01/13 13:40 by michael : The ACLU, EFF, and EPIC have put out a press release describing their reactions to the new rules. They still have plenty of problems with the U.S. export regulations.

Snibor Eoj writes "According to an article on Yahoo! News, Xerox has won a ruling that will allow it to pursue a claim against 3Com over a patent violation. They claim that the Graffiti language used in the Palm division violates the patent for a handwriting recognition method called "unistrokes" developed at Xerox PARC. "

You've almost certainly heard that the DVD CCA [Copyright Control Association] is trying to get a restraining order that would force hundreds of Web sites to remove all links to information about DeCSS. Slashdot is one of the named sites. The hearing is today, in San Jose, California. If you can get there, we urge you to go and help "show the flag." You won't be alone. If you can't make it in person, stay tuned. We'll have updates throughout the day. Meanwhile, click below now for news, opinions from various members of the Slashdot crew, and a long list of links to other resources and stories elsewhere about the DVD CCA's attempt to not only stop DeCSS, but to stifle anyone who publishes or links to information about DeCSS. Update at 1:20 p.m. EST. (Please see bottom of the story.)

Leading up to Today's Hearing
- by Emmett Plant
Emmett Plant is Slashdot's newest author.

Monday, DVD Copy Control Association, Inc. filed for a restraining order in a California court. The targets of this cease-and-desist order were individuals and organizations who had made DVD decryption source code freely available on the net, by hosting the code themselves or linking to a website that did. Commmunity response has been fast and furious, with a deluge of Slashdot comments and submissions, and the immediate organization of Open Source community members to attend the hearing this morning.

Technically, the argument boils down to the issue of reverse engineering. Ideologically, the argument challenges the ideals of free speech, freedom of information, and the ability to innovate on behalf of computer users, hardware engineers and software developers all over the planet.

On Monday night, I spoke to a gentleman who had received the order just minutes prior, and although he didn't want his name mentioned, he provided with me with his thoughts.

"It should be legal when you've got people reverse engineering this kind of stuff. But a small minority in the business community want to lock down the information, citing that it's a trade secret. It's sort of like being busted in math class for passing answers around. [The code] is basically a mathematical equation that decrypts poorly encrypted DVD data. I support the free human right to freedom of thought. That's how civilization has gotten to where it is today, without lawyers heading innovators off at the pass."

Would he be willing to go to court to defend himself?

"Probably not. There are a lot of sites that are mirroring [the code], and they'll keep the program alive. I'll sleep easy at night knowing I did my part."

In many ways, the cease-and-desist only made it easier for people to get their hands on the code. As soon as the community heard about the order, many people posted the code on their websites as a sign of protest. Many community members have made the code available on overseas servers that don't face the possible legal repercussions associated with sites located in the United States.

Another interesting point of this case is that anyone who linked to a site that contained the information is also being held liable in the case. This is particularly frightening. This means that in the spirit of the cease-and-desist order, almost everyone on the web with a site that links to anywhere else falls into the legal maelstrom, as long as it eventually leads to a site with the code posted on it.

The legal ramifications of the case are extremely influential. The DVD CCA lawyers are fighting a battle against reverse engineering, an engineering process that enables the computer industry to utilize powerful tools like the IBM-compatible personal computer and countless hardware device drivers.

The hearing will take place this morning at 8:30 a.m. Pacific Standard Time in the Superior Court of Santa Clara County, California.

----------

Funny and Sad at the Same Time
- by Hemos

The particularly humorous section of the lawsuit, at least for me, is that what they are trying to do is make linking illegal. That's right. Linking. Is. Illegal. Once we cross the the bridge of dictating what can and cannot be linked to, than we open ourselves up to a world of people being able to sue whenever something they don't want linked is linked. Without linking, the Web is dead.

----------

Shaky Legal Grounds
- by Michael Sims

The legal standing for the DVD companies is so shaky it's not even funny. The danger is that they can effectively paint the opposition as a bunch of crooks and the judge will feel that *justice* requires a ruling in their favor despite the law - that can be averted if the defense makes a strong competent showing tomorrow, presumably. The second danger is that they will inflict sufficient costs on the defendants that others will be dissuaded from doing even perfectly legal things. That can't be prevented.

----------

Planning to Join the Protest in Person?

The best source of information on how to help out at the Santa Clara County Courthouse is this page from Chris DiBona's Web site. It tells you where and when to be, what to wear, and what to expect. Worth reading even if you can't make it. Nice to know that Chris and others, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, are doing a great job for all of us on this!

----------

Update by Emmett @ 1:20 p.m. EST:

Chris DiBona called me at 8:30 a.m. PST from right outside the courtroom, letting me in on the scene. The Open Source community has about 25 people there, as well as a lawyer or two of their own. The community members present are busy distributing the DeCSS source code on floppy disk as well as leaflet hard copy. No pictures will be taken of the interior of the courtroom, and there wasn't enough time to apply for the permit to record what happens inside.

Chris will be calling me as soon as they let out with up-to-the-minute information and notes from the community members inside the courtroom.

----------

Links to Other DVD CCA Stories and Sites

Boston Globe
Washington Post
Wired News
ZDNet
siliconvalley.com
Chris DiBona's excellent page
PZ Communications DeCSS Resource Site
CNN.com
Lemuria.org DeCSS Defense page
Dan Gillmor (SV.com columnist)
Santa Clara County Superior Court info
OpenDVD.org
EFF to the Rescue!

----------

Please send additional links to roblimo@slashdot.org so we can add them to the list. Thanks.

Greg Miller writes "According to this article , Netscape has received approval to distribute the 128-bit encryption version of Communicator outside the U.S. They've also received limited permission to distribute SuiteSpot servers with strong encryption." [Update: 12/05 03:42 by michael : Slashdot got burned, this article is bogus. See below.]

Update:: We were fooled. Someone posted this on http://www.activewin.com/frames/frmhome.shtml as new news (suckered them!), which apparently misled the slashdot submitter and us. This is an old press release from 1997 talking about exporting software for certain specialized banking purposes. As far as I know, it's still illegal to generally export 128-bit crypto products.

Thanks to the alert posters in the threads below and to alecf who was bright enough to submit it in the stories inbox (which any of the assorted slashdot authors who are online might be reading) for a fast response. Sorry for the "desinformation" (is that a pun?).

A couple of readers pointed us to one of Wired's stories that is journaling the aftermath of a recent Slashdot story. The story was about a web hosting company that pulled a Y2K spoof movie, under pressure from the FBI. The disappointing part is the tone of the e-mails that were sent to the one-man operation. Wired has some samples from said e-mails. Please, before hitting send on e-mails and postings, think about the whole situation. In this case, after checking with legal people, the web-hosting company put back the movie and does not deserve the flame generated against it. The FBI is the culprit in this case, and rather then rail on one guy, we should be banding together to fight against actions like the FBI's. For more discussion read Thoughts from the Furnace, Rob's feature about flaming on the Web.

Addition: 11/30 by michael : I thought I'd chime in here, since I started the fracas.

Blaming the ISP is sometimes appropriate, and sometimes not. Huge national ISPs have legal staffs to evaluate whether something should or should not be pulled. In general, they display an astonishing lack of backbone in defending customer sites, because even minor hassle from law enforcement just isn't worth it to them, and they don't have much excuse when they knuckle under. Small ISPs are a much different matter. No legal staff, facing the loss of your entire business if you guess wrong. Let's say he stood up for this guy and refused to pull the site, and the FBI seized the ISP's computers. Would all you flamers have stood up for him, sent him money to fight the good fight, talked to his other customers and begged them to stay on even though their sites were down? Yeah, sure you would. He made the best business decision available to him. The difference between this guy and one of the national ISPs is that they wouldn't have put the site back up again at all.

And if Wired has it right and you people are writing to the ISP's other clients, that's just sad. Save your anger for someone who's actually done something wrong. You want to get pissed off, give the FBI a call and ask them how their "investigation" is going.

quakeaddict writes "LinuxQuake is now reporting that ID Software has indeed embedded some code to send, among other things, information about our PC's to ID Software. They should ASK before they start gleening information from my system." John Carmack's explanation on the page is unconvincing - video card data is sent independent of support requests and would be impossible to link to some user's email address, so it's useless for support purposes. (more) (update:This isn't as big of a deal as it sounds. read the update)

No, the second writer on LinuxQuake has it right when he says "It's market research." id doesn't care about current support, they want to know what cards to support in their next software release.

But the reason doesn't matter. The important part is that the software is doing something that it doesn't advertise and that isn't necessary for the operation of the software - sending information about your computer back to id software, which is mentioned nowhere in documentation, readme, EULA, website or installation. id calls it research - I call it a trojan horse program, and if I went into id's offices and installed a similar program that reported back to me on their machines, I would go to jail for it. If I convinced id to download and run it, by disguising it as, say, a video game, I'd go to jail for plain old fraud as well as the computer crime. That's 18 USC 47 section 1030, for the curious. It's been used against a number of 1337 d00dz who weren't quite 1337 enough.

So why does id think this is fine and dandy for them to do?

I like id's games, but this is not a joking matter. Software which performs functions beyond its stated activities is uncool (read: illegal), especially when those functions are spying on their users. Any sort of collection of data from user's machines, even relatively mundane data like the type of their video card, should be announced by the software and in the docs, and users should be able to opt out of it. How much bad press is it going to take before softwre companies get a clue? Or will the first hint they get be when an ambitious prosecutor serves a search warrant on them one day?

Update: 11/28 10:41 by michael : From various posts below and email received by yours truly, it looks as though id did have notification of the data-collecting activity in previous releases of the demo test; but not in the most recent one, for whatever reason. Perhaps the story should be about quality control on readme files. The basic point - companies need to be very open and upfront about things like this, even for benign purposes, and give people the option to opt-out - still stands, but it seems that id just made an error rather than tried to hide anything.

iCEBaLM writes "According to this Excite article, attackers who stole sensitive defense and technical research documents from US Defence Department computers were traced back to the Russian Academy of Sciences, [which is] government funded and has ties to the Russian Millitary. It seems it doesn't stop there and that attacks from Russia are quite widespread against US government and corporate sites. From Russia with Love." No! No! It's state-sponsored Cyberterrorism! [ M.S. : I want to remind readers that there's some serious doubt that these attacks actually exist - see George Smith's Electronic Pearl Harbor for more information.]

Now that the new hardware is in place, I'm happy to announce the first new section on Slashdot: Your Rights Online [YRO] is a place where we can go into greater depth on the issues surrounding freedoms and liberties on the Net, and really in the world at large. So much happens in this area that the Slashdot Homepage just doesn't have enough room to host it all, so while YRO will appear on Slashdot when I think its relevant to everyone, it will largely stand alone. Read on to learn more about the section.

The Net is changing fast, and so are many of the issues surrounding your rights online. The US Policies on Encryption Export, governments filtering websites from their citizens, and right now, the PICS project In fact, the PICS project is what the first article's about. It's part 1 of 2.

YRO will be maintained by Michael Sims and Jamie McCarthy Their job will be similiar to what the existing Slashdot Authors do; read submissions and pick the best articles for publishing, just in a more focused area. In addition, they'll be writing original articles when it's appropriate. YRO will have room to post many stories that wouldn't have been able to appear on Slashdot, while Slashdot will continue to post the stories that we think are more relevant to everyone.

Michael Sims is a programmer for the Department of Energy and online free-speech activist who administers censorware.org. He swears that there won't be a nuclear catastrophe on January 1, 2000. Jamie McCarthy writes perl code all day; if he ever gets free time he works on The Holocaust History Project or censorware.org. He owns every book Theodore Sturgeon ever wrote.

We're pretty excited about this. I hope you are too. Now let's just see if it works...

This Story was first sent in by Webster, and then sent by 30 or 40 more people. Basically Bill Gates took a cream pie in the face.