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First, you have to obtain a copy of GAY NIGGERS FROM OUTER SPACE THE MOVIE (Click Here to download the ~280MB MPEG off of BitTorrent)

Second, you need to succeed in posting a GNAA "first post" on slashdot.org, a popular "news for trolls" website

Third, you need to join the official GNAA irc channel #GNAA on Evolnet (or Efnet), and apply for membership.
Talk to one of the ops or any of the other members in the channel to sign up today!

If you are having trouble locating #GNAA, the official GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA irc channel, you might be on a wrong irc network. The correct network is Evolnet (or Efnet), and you can connect to irc.gnaa.us as one of the Evolnet servers. (or irc.efnet.nl for efnet)
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________________________________________________
| ______________________________________._a,____ |
| _______a_._______a_______aj#0s_____aWY!400.___ |
| __ad#7!!*P____a.d#0a____#!-_#0i___.#!__W#0#___ |
| _j#'_.00#,___4#dP_"#,__j#,__0#Wi___*00P!_"#L,_ |
| _"#ga#9!01___"#01__40,_"4Lj#!_4#g_________"01_ |
| ________"#,___*@`__-N#____`___-!^_____________ |
| _________#1__________?________________________ |
| _________j1___________________________________ |
| ____a,___jk_ GAY_NIGGER_ASSOCIATION_OF_AMERICA_|
| ____!4yaa#l___________________________________ |
| ______-"!^____________________________________ |
` _______________________________________________'

First, you have to obtain a copy of GAY NIGGERS FROM OUTER SPACE THE MOVIE (Click Here to download the ~280MB MPEG off of BitTorrent)

Second, you need to succeed in posting a GNAA "first post" on slashdot.org, a popular "news for trolls" website

Third, you need to join the official GNAA irc channel #GNAA on Evolnet (or Efnet), and apply for membership.
Talk to one of the ops or any of the other members in the channel to sign up today!

If you are having trouble locating #GNAA, the official GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA irc channel, you might be on a wrong irc network. The correct network is Evolnet (or Efnet), and you can connect to irc.gnaa.us as one of the Evolnet servers. (or irc.efnet.nl for efnet)
If you have mod points and would like to support GNAA, please moderate this post up.

This post brought to you by Lysol , a proud member of the GNAA.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION TO BRING BACK GOATSE.CX!

________________________________________________
| ______________________________________._a,____ |
| _______a_._______a_______aj#0s_____aWY!400.___ |
| __ad#7!!*P____a.d#0a____#!-_#0i___.#!__W#0#___ |
| _j#'_.00#,___4#dP_"#,__j#,__0#Wi___*00P!_"#L,_ |
| _"#ga#9!01___"#01__40,_"4Lj#!_4#g_________"01_ |
| ________"#,___*@`__-N#____`___-!^_____________ |
| _________#1__________?________________________ |
| _________j1___________________________________ |
| ____a,___jk_ GAY_NIGGER_ASSOCIATION_OF_AMERICA_|
| ____!4yaa#l___________________________________ |
| ______-"!^____________________________________ |
` _______________________________________________'

First, you have to obtain a copy of GAY NIGGERS FROM OUTER SPACE THE MOVIE (Click Here to download the ~280MB MPEG off of BitTorrent)

Second, you need to succeed in posting a GNAA "first post" on slashdot.org, a popular "news for trolls" website

Third, you need to join the official GNAA irc channel #GNAA on Evolnet (or Efnet), and apply for membership.
Talk to one of the ops or any of the other members in the channel to sign up today!

If you are having trouble locating #GNAA, the official GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA irc channel, you might be on a wrong irc network. The correct network is Evolnet (or Efnet), and you can connect to irc.gnaa.us as one of the Evolnet servers. (or irc.efnet.nl for efnet)
If you have mod points and would like to support GNAA, please moderate this post up.

This post brought to you by Lysol , a proud member of the GNAA.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION TO BRING BACK GOATSE.CX!

________________________________________________
| ______________________________________._a,____ |
| _______a_._______a_______aj#0s_____aWY!400.___ |
| __ad#7!!*P____a.d#0a____#!-_#0i___.#!__W#0#___ |
| _j#'_.00#,___4#dP_"#,__j#,__0#Wi___*00P!_"#L,_ |
| _"#ga#9!01___"#01__40,_"4Lj#!_4#g_________"01_ |
| ________"#,___*@`__-N#____`___-!^_____________ |
| _________#1__________?________________________ |
| _________j1___________________________________ |
| ____a,___jk_ GAY_NIGGER_ASSOCIATION_OF_AMERICA_|
| ____!4yaa#l___________________________________ |
| ______-"!^____________________________________ |
` _______________________________________________'

First, you have to obtain a copy of GAY NIGGERS FROM OUTER SPACE THE MOVIE (Click Here to download the ~280MB MPEG off of BitTorrent)

Second, you need to succeed in posting a GNAA "first post" on slashdot.org, a popular "news for trolls" website

Third, you need to join the official GNAA irc channel #GNAA on Evolnet (or Efnet), and apply for membership.
Talk to one of the ops or any of the other members in the channel to sign up today!

If you are having trouble locating #GNAA, the official GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA irc channel, you might be on a wrong irc network. The correct network is Evolnet (or Efnet), and you can connect to irc.gnaa.us as one of the Evolnet servers. (or irc.efnet.nl for efnet)
If you have mod points and would like to support GNAA, please moderate this post up.

This post brought to you by Lysol , a proud member of the GNAA.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION TO BRING BACK GOATSE.CX!

________________________________________________
| ______________________________________._a,____ |
| _______a_._______a_______aj#0s_____aWY!400.___ |
| __ad#7!!*P____a.d#0a____#!-_#0i___.#!__W#0#___ |
| _j#'_.00#,___4#dP_"#,__j#,__0#Wi___*00P!_"#L,_ |
| _"#ga#9!01___"#01__40,_"4Lj#!_4#g_________"01_ |
| ________"#,___*@`__-N#____`___-!^_____________ |
| _________#1__________?________________________ |
| _________j1___________________________________ |
| ____a,___jk_ GAY_NIGGER_ASSOCIATION_OF_AMERICA_|
| ____!4yaa#l___________________________________ |
| ______-"!^____________________________________ |
` _______________________________________________'

First, you have to obtain a copy of GAY NIGGERS FROM OUTER SPACE THE MOVIE (Click Here to download the ~280MB MPEG off of BitTorrent)

Second, you need to succeed in posting a GNAA "first post" on slashdot.org, a popular "news for trolls" website

Third, you need to join the official GNAA irc channel #GNAA on Evolnet (or Efnet), and apply for membership.
Talk to one of the ops or any of the other members in the channel to sign up today!

If you are having trouble locating #GNAA, the official GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA irc channel, you might be on a wrong irc network. The correct network is Evolnet (or Efnet), and you can connect to irc.gnaa.us as one of the Evolnet servers. (or irc.efnet.nl for efnet)
If you have mod points and would like to support GNAA, please moderate this post up.

This post brought to you by Lysol , a proud member of the GNAA.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION TO BRING BACK GOATSE.CX!

________________________________________________
| ______________________________________._a,____ |
| _______a_._______a_______aj#0s_____aWY!400.___ |
| __ad#7!!*P____a.d#0a____#!-_#0i___.#!__W#0#___ |
| _j#'_.00#,___4#dP_"#,__j#,__0#Wi___*00P!_"#L,_ |
| _"#ga#9!01___"#01__40,_"4Lj#!_4#g_________"01_ |
| ________"#,___*@`__-N#____`___-!^_____________ |
| _________#1__________?________________________ |
| _________j1___________________________________ |
| ____a,___jk_ GAY_NIGGER_ASSOCIATION_OF_AMERICA_|
| ____!4yaa#l___________________________________ |
| ______-"!^____________________________________ |
` _______________________________________________'

First, you have to obtain a copy of GAY NIGGERS FROM OUTER SPACE THE MOVIE (Click Here to download the ~280MB MPEG off of BitTorrent)

Second, you need to succeed in posting a GNAA "first post" on slashdot.org, a popular "news for trolls" website

Third, you need to join the official GNAA irc channel #GNAA on Evolnet (or Efnet), and apply for membership.
Talk to one of the ops or any of the other members in the channel to sign up today!

If you are having trouble locating #GNAA, the official GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA irc channel, you might be on a wrong irc network. The correct network is Evolnet (or Efnet), and you can connect to irc.gnaa.us as one of the Evolnet servers. (or irc.efnet.nl for efnet)
If you have mod points and would like to support GNAA, please moderate this post up.

This post brought to you by Lysol , a proud member of the GNAA.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION TO BRING BACK GOATSE.CX!

________________________________________________
| ______________________________________._a,____ |
| _______a_._______a_______aj#0s_____aWY!400.___ |
| __ad#7!!*P____a.d#0a____#!-_#0i___.#!__W#0#___ |
| _j#'_.00#,___4#dP_"#,__j#,__0#Wi___*00P!_"#L,_ |
| _"#ga#9!01___"#01__40,_"4Lj#!_4#g_________"01_ |
| ________"#,___*@`__-N#____`___-!^_____________ |
| _________#1__________?________________________ |
| _________j1___________________________________ |
| ____a,___jk_ GAY_NIGGER_ASSOCIATION_OF_AMERICA_|
| ____!4yaa#l___________________________________ |
| ______-"!^____________________________________ |
` _______________________________________________'

First, you have to obtain a copy of GAY NIGGERS FROM OUTER SPACE THE MOVIE (Click Here to download the ~280MB MPEG off of BitTorrent)

Second, you need to succeed in posting a GNAA "first post" on slashdot.org, a popular "news for trolls" website

Third, you need to join the official GNAA irc channel #GNAA on Evolnet (or Efnet), and apply for membership.
Talk to one of the ops or any of the other members in the channel to sign up today!

If you are having trouble locating #GNAA, the official GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA irc channel, you might be on a wrong irc network. The correct network is Evolnet (or Efnet), and you can connect to irc.gnaa.us as one of the Evolnet servers. (or irc.efnet.nl for efnet)
If you have mod points and would like to support GNAA, please moderate this post up.

This post brought to you by Lysol , a proud member of the GNAA.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION TO BRING BACK GOATSE.CX!

________________________________________________
| ______________________________________._a,____ |
| _______a_._______a_______aj#0s_____aWY!400.___ |
| __ad#7!!*P____a.d#0a____#!-_#0i___.#!__W#0#___ |
| _j#'_.00#,___4#dP_"#,__j#,__0#Wi___*00P!_"#L,_ |
| _"#ga#9!01___"#01__40,_"4Lj#!_4#g_________"01_ |
| ________"#,___*@`__-N#____`___-!^_____________ |
| _________#1__________?________________________ |
| _________j1___________________________________ |
| ____a,___jk_ GAY_NIGGER_ASSOCIATION_OF_AMERICA_|
| ____!4yaa#l___________________________________ |
| ______-"!^____________________________________ |
` _______________________________________________'

First, you have to obtain a copy of GAY NIGGERS FROM OUTER SPACE THE MOVIE (Click Here to download the ~280MB MPEG off of BitTorrent)

Second, you need to succeed in posting a GNAA "first post" on slashdot.org, a popular "news for trolls" website

Third, you need to join the official GNAA irc channel #GNAA on Evolnet (or Efnet), and apply for membership.
Talk to one of the ops or any of the other members in the channel to sign up today!

If you are having trouble locating #GNAA, the official GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA irc channel, you might be on a wrong irc network. The correct network is Evolnet (or Efnet), and you can connect to irc.gnaa.us as one of the Evolnet servers. (or irc.efnet.nl for efnet)
If you have mod points and would like to support GNAA, please moderate this post up.

This post brought to you by Lysol , a proud member of the GNAA.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION TO BRING BACK GOATSE.CX!

________________________________________________
| ______________________________________._a,____ |
| _______a_._______a_______aj#0s_____aWY!400.___ |
| __ad#7!!*P____a.d#0a____#!-_#0i___.#!__W#0#___ |
| _j#'_.00#,___4#dP_"#,__j#,__0#Wi___*00P!_"#L,_ |
| _"#ga#9!01___"#01__40,_"4Lj#!_4#g_________"01_ |
| ________"#,___*@`__-N#____`___-!^_____________ |
| _________#1__________?________________________ |
| _________j1___________________________________ |
| ____a,___jk_ GAY_NIGGER_ASSOCIATION_OF_AMERICA_|
| ____!4yaa#l___________________________________ |
| ______-"!^____________________________________ |
` _______________________________________________'

... and it ought to be possble. WPA was designed to be implementable with a firmware upgrade to existing 802.11b hardware. See here for more on that - scroll down about halfway on the page.

I have a perfectly useable 500 MHz G3 iBook that's going to be cut off from my company's wireless when they move to WPA, because it's not AirPort Extreme capable. Is Apple's response going to be "go buy a new laptop - your less-than-two-years-old machine is obsolete"? Even though it's supported by Panther (which improved performance on it quite a bit, thankyouverymuch)?

I'm willing to pay something reasonable for the upgrade - I realize code like that doesn't write itself. But just abandoning the non-Extreme hardware sucks.

Have a look at this TidBITS headphone article which discusses the merits of several different brands and models of headphones for use with portable music players. Very informative and well-researched.

By the way, there's a section that deals specifically with the type of headphone that you described (i.e. behind-the-head). The Koss KSC-55 (mentioned in the article) gets a good review. It's one of two headphones in this style that actually sound decent. Also, it only costs $19.99 US.

D.

"Power User" is a concept that makes no sense in Unix land. When everything is open, when anyone can dig down to the metal if s/he so desires, then the boundary between "User" and "Programmer" becomes blurred and replaced by a continuous spectrum. Wherever you stand, you can always keep learning, and everything reminds you of how little you know. Who's to be called a "Unix Power User"? A perl expert? Larry Wall? It doesn't make sense.

Where it makes sense is/was in systems like Windows or (pre-X) Mac OS, where everything was closed so the most you could be was, well, a user. That was the habitat of the quintessential "Power User", someone with an encyclopedic knowledge of all the little (closed source) utilities you should download if you want to perform unforeseen tasks. "Linux Power User" makes just as much sense as "GNU Shareware": the day the expression takes hold is the day we'll know Linux has died.

Buying you flowers and candy after they've ravaged your ass, does not "make it right".

But I believe Apple is probably well within their rights on this one. While it may be unreasonable under many circumstances for a programmer to have his employer claim rights to what he wrote on his own time, it's likely that this particular programmer had greater-than-average privilege to Apple documentation, OS source, engineers who developed the source, and future business plans. More importantly, Apple may decide in the future to partner with Netflix (not saying they were going to, just that it could have been an option). So, if they did, Apple competes with their employee. They can't enforce their contracts selectively. What would they say? "We didn't have this agreement with Netflix when you released your shareware, but we do now so now we're going to take possession of it."?

BTW, here's a link to an article which describes the actual program and a link to the Info-Mac archive (yes, you can still get it there) for you Mac OS X folk.

Netflix Fanatic 1.1.4 mirrored here. Note that it's only for Mac OS X.

Someone get a torrent going...

ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/info-mac/app/netflix- fanatic-114.hqx

Found more information. Tidbits from May 29th, 1995 mentions the Keychain, it's use, and what it could be used for and just what it happens to be used for now.

And an article Sep 27th, 1993 talks about PowerTalk's upcoming release. So yeah, good luck with that patent IBM.

Found more information. Tidbits from May 29th, 1995 mentions the Keychain, it's use, and what it could be used for and just what it happens to be used for now.

And an article Sep 27th, 1993 talks about PowerTalk's upcoming release. So yeah, good luck with that patent IBM.

This is all correct.
The AutoStart-9805 Worm used the feature to automatically run the worm program and spread to other Macs. Since then Apple has defaulted this feature to *OFF*.

Why make it a QuickTime setting? Because back then QuickTime was the only thing using the feature. Even today very few programs use it, if any.

with a fault on the battery of the powerbook

Ah, yes, the PowerBook 5300. So much fun to mock Apple over this-- even eight years later, nobody ever seems to get tired of it.

Well, guess who made those faulty PowerBook batteries? Sony!

~Philly

Much, much more than you think.

When I was working at a failing .com, I remember my manager saying "once we turn this around I'm going to get the most gorgeous PowerBook I can get" (he hated his Dell). Someone else, who shall remain nameless, bought a G4 Tower with a 17" studio display because he saw how gorgeous my 17" was (the 17" iMac wasn't out yet, and you need a tower to run the 17" ASDs). This person uses the (very expensive) G4 to check email at work (he says it's good for impressing clients). This person freaked out when I replaced Chimera with Safari, because it looked too different. He didn't know how to use it!

Chances are your boss has a more expensive box than you do. It's probably a portable, but it's probably... nice.

People with money can afford the prettier, nicer things in life, but that doesn't mean that they know why they're any good. How many old people do you see driving high-end Mercedes sports cars? A LOT! They're the only ones who can afford them! How many women do you see driving 'cute' yet powerful sports cars (such as low-end Mercedes or Z3s)? A LOT! No other kind of car can be as 'cute' as a small sports car. How many women do you see driving SUVs? A LOT! How many of them bought them because they were four wheel drive? Certainly the woman in the SUV behind me during the nightly traffic jam "drive" home didn't. Why is Porsche making an SUV? it's going to sell a hell of a lot better than their two-seater sports cars! And again, if you're in the market for a 'luxurious,' enviable computer, which brands are you going to turn to?

This is a reason why geeks can't understand WTF Apple is doing sometimes. Apple's target demographic is much larger (they have to satisfy the Mathematica geeks and the SUV drivers). And you ALWAYS make more money targetting a demographic that has money than targeting markets that don't; which is a large reason why Apple didn't suffer anywhere near as much as the PC makers did during this downturn.

And, back on topic, OS X is far more sophisticated than most Linux developers realize. Apple succeeded bringing Unix to the desktop; they didn't do it by making users learn how Unix works. I remember a TidBits article ranting about poor Unix user experience, talking about things like invisible dot-files in your home directory for app preferences (he was worried about how Unix-y Mac OS X was going to be). Forcing your users to think they way you do is the wrong approach.

Which is why Apple ships Macs with one button mice. If you want a good mouse you can buy the best damn mouse you want- with or without a scroll wheel, as many buttons as you want, etc. Myself, I use a graphics tablet! For me, mice suck in comparison, so why should Apple try an appease my 'sophisticated' tastes? Instead, I plug in my fav. tablet and the OS gives me hand writing recognition and fractional pixel resolution (that is, the OS gives apps the fraction of a pixel I'm on; event coords are not integers, but floats). If I use a mouse with a scroll wheel, it supports the scroll wheel too. If I use a mouse with a second button (or the second button on my tablet's stylus), the OS supports that. The mouse Apple provides is the lowest common denominator that everyone can use, and it's a pretty damn good mouse, being optical and all. For the times when I need a mouse it's great. It's free. I had to teach that person who bought the 17" how to double-click (many years ago); he kept moving the pointer all over the place while doing it. All right, he's my Dad.

Let the user do what they want to do, and support whatever they want to do. Don't make them fit into your definition of 'correct.' Kind of like sites who say "you must use IE 6" or "you must have JavaScript enabled" or "you must register to read content at the NY Times." Your reaction: screw you buddy; I'll spend my time elsewhere.

with the DRM built into .aac, I'm curious how these downloaded files work with the iPod? from some comments on the tidbits-talk mailing list on the DRM in AAC, it seems that you have to enter your Apple ID every time you want to play a purchased song. So how can you listen to it on the iPod when you have to authenticate against Apple's servers every time? Does the new iPod have some sort of master DRM key? Does it download your key information when you download songs to it? Enquiring minds want to know

Amusing items in this year's issue:

• Apple Reschedules WWDC Yet Again
• Microsoft Word 5.1 for Mac OS X
• Catching Up with the Voice of Macintosh: Fred

System 7.5 had a ton of different enablers and patches through 7.5.2. (Supporting all the Mac clones coming out at that time only added to the confusion.) And PCI PowerMacs had recently come out, which the old networking core didn't support at all. So Apple rushed Open Transport (their new networking core) out for these new Macs. The System software they were distributing was an ugly mass of hacks and kludges.

Finally Apple rolled all the hacks into one solid System version, incorporated a version of Open Transport that worked on all Macs (except the original 68000 Macs), added a lot more PowerPC-specific code (which reduced crashes a lot), and threw in a ton of other bug fixes. This release was System 7.5 Update 2.0 (i.e. 7.5.3).

Mac OS 7.6 featured a much improved installer, the Apple Internet Connection Kit (the first time Apple shipped system software with web browsers), a new Extension Manager, and a lot of under-the-hood stability enhancements. It did also pull in some technologies that had previously only been available separately.

System 7.5 had a ton of different enablers and patches through 7.5.2. (Supporting all the Mac clones coming out at that time only added to the confusion.) And PCI PowerMacs had recently come out, which the old networking core didn't support at all. So Apple rushed Open Transport (their new networking core) out for these new Macs. The System software they were distributing was an ugly mass of hacks and kludges.

Finally Apple rolled all the hacks into one solid System version, incorporated a version of Open Transport that worked on all Macs (except the original 68000 Macs), added a lot more PowerPC-specific code (which reduced crashes a lot), and threw in a ton of other bug fixes. This release was System 7.5 Update 2.0 (i.e. 7.5.3).

Mac OS 7.6 featured a much improved installer, the Apple Internet Connection Kit (the first time Apple shipped system software with web browsers), a new Extension Manager, and a lot of under-the-hood stability enhancements. It did also pull in some technologies that had previously only been available separately.

clarifications anyone?
by proclus on Wednesday December 18, @07:05PM EST

Sorry, I just couldn't let the story to out this way, because truth is important to me.

All machines that are currently supported will continue to be supported in their current configurations, so we are not pulling out the rug as it were. The situation could be better than this, but the ball is now in Apple's court. I will say that Apple has been moving in the right direction with respect to these issues over the past few years. If projects like ours can stay engaged with them, there may be a chance. It is not easy, and may be overly optimistic, but there it is. I'd like to give some time for Apple to respond.

The main source for the Apple/DMCA story is at the following link, although it has been covered extensively on the web as an 'Apple DMCA' googlesearch will reveal.

http://news.com.com/2100-1023-955805.html

Based on my experience with the Adobe boycott and other anti-DMCA activism, I consider Declan as a trusted source. Here are some good stories about the impact of the DMCA in general and on Apple users.

http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-656.html# lnk3
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06901

As for the APSL, this has been a long standing issue with the Distribution, which dates back to the founding.

http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=00/12/01/20282 54&mode=thread

Darwin is not free software, because the APSL is not consistent with the free software definition. For more information, check GNU Project.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/apsl.html

You may know Yves@gnu-darwin.org, who is a OSXFaq.com editorial contributor. His most recent installment is highly germain.

http://www.osxfaq.com/Editorial/open/index4.ws

Until Darwin is freed, activists such as myself will be leading users away from it instead of toward it. This antagonism towards Apple in the free software community has been aggravated by the DMCA fiasco. For example, Slashdot coverage of Apple has soured considerably since that time. We added the caveat to our Darwin distribution CD's soon after that (see grey box).

http://www.gnu-darwin.org/order.shtml

Clearly it is in Apple's best interest to repudiate the DMCA, to remove the onerous anti-privacy clause from the APSL, and to meet the standards of GNU Project, so that users can have a truly free OS, and so that activists can support Darwin instead of undermining it.

The message for users is to educate yourself about software freedom. In this world of economic contraction, the DMCA, RIAA, and the patriot act, that might take some effort, but it will be worthwhile in the event that free software becomes more difficult to maintain. Here is the starting point.

http://www.gnu.org

Regards,
proclus
http://www.gnu-darwin.org/

clarifications anyone?
by proclus on Wednesday December 18, @07:05PM EST

Sorry, I just couldn't let the story to out this way, because truth is important to me.

All machines that are currently supported will continue to be supported in their current configurations, so we are not pulling out the rug as it were. The situation could be better than this, but the ball is now in Apple's court. I will say that Apple has been moving in the right direction with respect to these issues over the past few years. If projects like ours can stay engaged with them, there may be a chance. It is not easy, and may be overly optimistic, but there it is. I'd like to give some time for Apple to respond.

The main source for the Apple/DMCA story is at the following link, although it has been covered extensively on the web as an 'Apple DMCA' googlesearch will reveal.

http://news.com.com/2100-1023-955805.html

Based on my experience with the Adobe boycott and other anti-DMCA activism, I consider Declan as a trusted source. Here are some good stories about the impact of the DMCA in general and on Apple users.

http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-656.html# lnk3
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06901

As for the APSL, this has been a long standing issue with the Distribution, which dates back to the founding.

http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=00/12/01/20282 54&mode=thread

Darwin is not free software, because the APSL is not consistent with the free software definition. For more information, check GNU Project.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/apsl.html

You may know Yves@gnu-darwin.org, who is a OSXFaq.com editorial contributor. His most recent installment is highly germain.

http://www.osxfaq.com/Editorial/open/index4.ws

Until Darwin is freed, activists such as myself will be leading users away from it instead of toward it. This antagonism towards Apple in the free software community has been aggravated by the DMCA fiasco. For example, Slashdot coverage of Apple has soured considerably since that time. We added the caveat to our Darwin distribution CD's soon after that (see grey box).

http://www.gnu-darwin.org/order.shtml

Clearly it is in Apple's best interest to repudiate the DMCA, to remove the onerous anti-privacy clause from the APSL, and to meet the standards of GNU Project, so that users can have a truly free OS, and so that activists can support Darwin instead of undermining it.

The message for users is to educate yourself about software freedom. In this world of economic contraction, the DMCA, RIAA, and the patriot act, that might take some effort, but it will be worthwhile in the event that free software becomes more difficult to maintain. Here is the starting point.

http://www.gnu.org

Regards,
proclus
http://www.gnu-darwin.org/

an excellent weapon against RSI is simple exercises

More exercises, as well as good ergonomic info, can be found in this poster from TidBITS. I used to distribute copies to co-workers, back when I had a real job.

Why did you take out the PayPal link at the end? Especially in an article about the content cartel dinosaurs. Here it is again:

PayBITS: Is this is an important article on an important topic?
Adam will donate all of this article's PayBITS proceeds to the EFF!
<https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=ace%40tidb its.com>
Read more about PayBITS: <http://www.tidbits.com/paybits/>

If you liked this article, go ahead and send the guy a few bucks. You accomplish TWO goals with you donation: 1) you prove that voluntary payments work, and 2) you make a donation to the EFF (you know, the one you've been meaning to make for a long time now).

I sent him a few bucks already.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That's less of a problem with Jaguar, but it's still true to some extent, mainly because response time to mouse clicks is much longer on OSX than it was in OS9. In OS9, the time between the mouse button going down and some noticeable change happening on the screen was just a few milliseconds. In OSX, it seems more like several tens of milliseconds. It's a very noticeable difference. To see this, click your mouse fairly quickly, taking note of the "ka-chunk" that occurs where "ka" is down and "chunk" is up. Now click and hold on a menu in OSX. Notice that the menu drops down at roughly the same time that "chunk" would happen if you had released the mouse button. There's an obvious "beat" between the time the mouse goes down and the time the menu drops down. Now boot into OS9 (not Classic) and do the same test. The time lag between the mouse going down and the menu dropping is so short it's virtually undetectable.

On the other hand, preemptive multitasking kind of makes up for it; in OS9 I was used to the entire machine locking up when the mouse was down or certain dialog boxes (like printing) were in progress. But in OSX, almost nothing ever locks up the entire machine. Operations that would monopolize the processor in OS9 (like Acrobat when it's searching for a string in a long document) have no such effect in OSX--you're always free to switch to another application to continue to get work done. Those CPU-hogging operations are now very obvious and annoying when I occasionally boot into OS9.

Most operations that don't involve the user interface seem faster in OSX than in OS9. To me, the file system seems faster, network operations seem faster, and CPU-intensive operations seem faster. Whether this is a true speedup or merely the result of preemptive timeslicing I don't know.

The Finder is still the biggest problem in Jaguar. The OS9 Finder was a well-honed jewel of user interface mastery, having been originally designed by user interface experts and successively refined over a decade and a half. The OS9 Finder was a subtle beast: novices had no trouble with it and never noticed its deeper layers, while power users found that it was supremely useful at doing industrial-strength operations without getting in your way. In the OS9 Finder I rarely touched the mouse, so facile was the system at being controlled by the keyboard.

In OSX the situation is different. The Finder in OSX is pretty and it's reasonably functional for novices. But it clearly was not designed by user interface experts and it's not capable of handling what power users need. "Of course," you say, "that's what the Terminal is for." But in OS9, there was no Terminal, and the Finder there was designed well enough that you almost never wished you had one. In OSX, perhaps because there is a Terminal, the Finder's designers have not taken any great pains to make the thing usable to power users. For example, Labels were very useful to power users and they're gone now. The Open and Save dialog boxes cannot be navigated with the keyboard any more, like they could in OS9. (This problem was slightly addressed in Jaguar, in that you can now use arrow keys in this dialog, but you still cannot navigate the dialog alphabetically like you could in OS9). Window opening and refreshing in the OSX Finder is much slower than it was in OS9, and the OSX Finder is dirt slow when you use it to perform an operation on hundreds of files at once. Wanna see the rainbow cursor? Open your browser cache folder when it's got over 1000 files, select all, then hit cmd-Delete to throw them in the trash. The OS9 Finder was somewhat slow when it dealt with thousands of files too, but the situation seems worse in OSX. You'd think it would be better.

All in all, I think I'm just about as productive in Jaguar as I was in OS9. But I'd be more so if the Finder didn't suck so much.

Sure there are other ways to move files around (hey, use Zmodem if you want!) but in general, easier is better.

As the article notes, that's what "FUD" really means, as opposed to the way it's used here to mean "said something vaguely critical about Lunix".

Just a quick note to say that a comparison of a few online digital photo places has been done by a writer for TidBITS, the well-respected Mac-slanted newsletter. The relevant issues are #616 and #617.

On another topic, if you're thinking about jumping to digital photography, do it. Briefly:

Seriously though, getting a digital camera changes the way you take photos. My partner and I have taken over 2000 photos since Christmas, not counting the ones we've trashed already. Yes, we used to use Picture CDs from conventional photography, and they were pretty good, but our (low-end) 2 megapixel camera gives higher resolution images than the best Picture CD pics we got. (And not all of those were equal, but don't get me started on that.)

BTW, Photo CD - the really nice pro CD option with all the different resolution options from Kodak - has been discontinued. No new machines are available.

Just a quick note to say that a comparison of a few online digital photo places has been done by a writer for TidBITS, the well-respected Mac-slanted newsletter. The relevant issues are #616 and #617.

On another topic, if you're thinking about jumping to digital photography, do it. Briefly:

Seriously though, getting a digital camera changes the way you take photos. My partner and I have taken over 2000 photos since Christmas, not counting the ones we've trashed already. Yes, we used to use Picture CDs from conventional photography, and they were pretty good, but our (low-end) 2 megapixel camera gives higher resolution images than the best Picture CD pics we got. (And not all of those were equal, but don't get me started on that.)

BTW, Photo CD - the really nice pro CD option with all the different resolution options from Kodak - has been discontinued. No new machines are available.

Here it is. From that site:

Third Place: AirPort Radar -- Three years ago at MacHack, every table in the hotel atrium where the hackers congregate was adorned with an Ethernet hub. Most of those disappeared last year, because many people had AirPort cards and could use the wireless network instead, and this year, all but a very few people relied entirely on six AirPort Base Stations scattered around the hotel. Taking advantage of the wireless network setup, Mike Neil and Eric Traut wrote AirPort Radar, which used the differing signal strengths from multiple AirPort Base Stations to triangulate and display the location of a PowerBook, even while it was moving.

Several hundred dollars of VA stock price collapse later, that's the last anyone in the MacHack world has seen of him. So Taco, if you can butter them up enough, maybe you can leave with a new laptop too.

The company says versions of Internet Explorer prior to 5.1, of Outlook Express prior to 5.0.1, and of Office prior to Office 98 are no longer supported, have not been tested, and may or may not be subject to these vulnerabilities.

This dates back to at least 1993 (link), I don't remember if video recorders had even been invented back then ;-)

I've never ran across a video of this ACB episode, so the whole thing could be just a rec.humor.funny joke. But as they say in Italy, "Se non è vero è ben trovato" (it might not be true, but it's good anyway).

By the way, at least one guy at Microsoft seems to have a sense of humor: see this page. Here's another good one I found there:

From: johnny99@sydney.dialix.oz.au
Two computer people discussing those old stories about Bill Gates' name adding up to 666 in ASCII:

``I hear that if you play the NT 4.0 CD backwards, you get a satanic message.''

``--That's nothing. If you play it forward, it installs NT 4.0!''

TiVo improves your quaility of life, which is a very difficult thing to articulate, let alone encapsulate into a 30-second commercial. VCRs took off because of home porn, and DVDs because of quailty and coinciding with affordable home surround-sound.

The problem with TiVo is that it solves problems people aren't aware they have. First you have to educate all the consumers about TV's failings, and why a VCR doesn't solve them. Only then will they understand the value of TiVo. Currently, a live demonstration is really required. Then they get it. Shameless personal promotion: I wrote TidBITS' review of TiVo. -Andrew

Before people start asking, we will NOT be asking for donations or having a paypal donation button

I don't get these comments, it costs them money but they don't ask for any, or they ask people to buy tchotchkes which are secondary to the actual comic product.

Why not add a PayPal button? Is it some kind of pride or something, that people might think they are begging? They don't seem to have a problem with banner ads.

The internet makes it possible for you to say "you can pay if you want, and if you don't that's okay too". Public radio has been working like this for while, why not use the model on the internet?

I don't read any online comics but there are some free things like TidBITS and heroic stories for which I have gotten into the habit of pay $10-20/yr for as if it was a paper subscription (hell I've read Tidbits since freakin' high school and I feel like I owe them a lot). I'd be willing to pay for stuff like /. too, I pay for stuff that adds value to my life, and I don't care if other people don't pay.

An interesting note is that most professional audio systems totally ignore this protection bit. I believe most store-bought CDs have this bit set in their stream if you use a CD player capable of AES/EBU output. We used to plug it direct digital into a professional mixing console, which should have not read it since the bit was set. I think someone didn't have the insight to know that the honor system rarely works.

It's probably more along the lines of most people/things/etc. not paying attention to bozo bits.

Tidbits (a MacOS maillist & web site that happens to be based in Washington state) sued a spammer in 1998. They won in 2000, but by then the spammer had fled across different state lines a dozen times, and you have to file new paperwork every time. They eventually gave up on collecting from him.

The article doesn't specify if Bennett has actually received money yet, or just a judgement. It's quite possible he won't see a dime.

Because the GPL is inherently designed to allow "trading", ie you do NOT violate the GPL by "trading" GPL'd software.

Violating GPL != Trading GPLd software.

The key point here is that many people (myself included) believe that, since music is a Pure Public Good (see http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-602.html# lnk5 ), it should be freely available to anyone who wants it, just like GPLd software! People think that the concept of the GPL (and other "open source" licences) is good, and that the concept of having to pay (ridiculous) sums of money for music is bad.

I think that you're missing the point; people believe software and music should be freely available.

The GPL enables this, therefore it is good. Furthermore, violating the GPL prevents software from being freely available, therefore it is bad.

Music trading makes music freely available, therefore it is good.

So what's the most interesting thing you guys have seen? I've gotten a time card template, a cover letter for a job application at IBM and a lot of gibberish. Please don't post anyone's dirty laundry! Just wondering what the worst has been.

By the way, what's the best way for a MacOS/Linux user to view those .pif and .com files? I've never seen those formats before.

Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.

The book (which is here at amazon, by the way) has it's own web site as well.
I did a review of that book once for TidBITS, which you can find here

The book (which is here at amazon, by the way) has it's own web site as well.
I did a review of that book once for TidBITS, which you can find here

From the Tidbits Newsletter:

.pro, to be operated by RegistryPro, an Irish company owned by Register.com and Virtual Internet. It is intended to be used by doctors, lawyers, accountants, and other providers of "professional" services.

For instance, ".aero". Will it only be for US aerospace companies?

* .aero, to be operated by the Societe Internationale de Telecommunications Aeronautiques (SITA), a Belgian airline telecommunications firm. The .aero domain is intended to be used for the air transport industry; it's unclear why the air transport industry warrants its own top-level domain, but ICANN may see it as a precedent for future industry-specific domains.

As for why Apple is fed up with this type of behavior, it's because they are afraid of losing market share. Much of Apple's current business plan seems to be creating new things that aren't that hard to reproduce (clear optical mouse, cube-shaped computer, easy-to-use movie software). Much of Apple's sucess rides on being the only ones offering such products. If a competitor had knowledge of Apple's plans six months before Apple released products, they could possible bring a competitive product to market, perhaps before Apple. This would effectively negate Apple's edge.

Also if Apple's customers know that a new product line is coming out, they might not buy into the current line. Can't happen, you say? Look at Kaypro. They announced the new version of their computer a year before it shipped. People got excited about the new version and stopped buying the old version. With no money coming in, Kaypro was barely able to finish the machine and wandered into backruptcy soon after.

Apple isn't the only one doing this. Adobe is suing Apple Insider over their previews of Photoshop 6 and ImageReady 3. I suspect that as the Internet continues to facilitate the rapid spread of information we will see more and more of this type of thing.

An MWJ editor wrote a very good analysis of this subject. Check it out for more details.

First, there's an interesting article in today's TidBits about this issue. Among other things, it points out that there's a plausible case that rumors sites have a negative impact on Apple.

Second, the current focus of Apple's lawyers is on the individual(s) who did violate NDAs, not on sites who use that information.

Third, regarding Cliff's comment -- remember that Apple is a real company that needs to make a profit, and does so by selling distinctive hardware and software. It's unfair to expect it to be as cuddly as a Linux start-up that sells a product someone else makes, doesn't and never will turn a profit and whose primary business activity is keeping its stock price inflated by "demonstrating that it gets the community."