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DVD CCA Battle Continues Next Week
I recently had the opportunity to speak to Robin Gross, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation working on this case.
Slashdot : Come on, we're geeks, not lawyers. What does this hearing mean?
Robin Gross : It's important to note that in preliminary injunction hearings, this is pretty much where the game is played. This hearing is crucial in cases like this. Since we've got all these people in town for the RSA encryption conference, we're really calling upon the technical community to support this case and show up at court to educate the media there. Right now, the media focus is on piracy, and we need to turn that around. These folks are not trying to pirate movies, but rather watch the movies that they've already purchased, and continue research on DVD encryption. We're relying to a large extent on experts like cryptologists and programmers in the Linux community to educate their friends and family about encryption, and turn this around so people understand what the defendants are trying to accomplish.
This case is really important for a couple reasons. First, protecting the first amendment and free speech on the Internet. These defendants are engaging in activities that are completely legal in the US as well as in Norway where the plaintiffs are complaining the original sin occurred. A lot of these people are encryption scientists and computer programmers who are simply trying to learn how to play DVDs on their non-Windows boxes. Another reason is that it's really important that people are allowed to reverse engineer computer software. The law in this country, as well as Norway, allows people to reverse engineer software, letting them try to pick it apart, figure out how it works, and then use that knowledge to innovate and build new technology, products and services, and in this case, extending the DVD industry's market.
In a lot of ways, these people want to be DVD customers. They want to be able to buy DVDs and watch them on the computers they already have. So, their choice is either not buying DVDs, or watching them using this patch.
The EFF has their brief and other documents available at http://www.eff.org/pub/Intellectual_property/DVD/.
There are, of course, at least two sides to every story. This afternoon I spoke to Jeffrey Kessler, an attorney for Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, the law firm representing the DVD Copy Control Association.
Jeffrey Kessler : I hope that we prevail. That's all I'm going to say at this point.
Since they weren't talking, I decided to pull on the ear of Douglas Winslow, one of the defendants named in the case. Douglas still has the DeCSS code posted on his site, and he is one of the many defendants that cannot appear in court due to distance and time constraints.
Slashdot: So, the preliminary injunction hearing is next Tuesday. Any feelings?
Douglas Winslow : I feel we have a strong case. It'll be interesting to see what kind of precedent is set.
Slashdot: Are you going to party if the defendants are victorious?
Douglas Winslow : I plan to party either way. I'll either end up watching or burning part of my DVD collection to celebrate the outcome of the hearing.
To be continued by Robin "roblimo" Miller on the 18th...
I have seen what looks like the DVD CCA courting the press, especially CNN Headline News, about "hackers" pirating DVD's. Its one sided articles like these that make me wonder how ramped up the DVD CCA is toward public relations and pumping up press releases.
I read through most of the documents at the site that Ms. Gross gives a pointer to. This is an excellent preparation that brings in the appropriate law and facts and testimony as we understand them. It looks like a very strong case to this non-lawyer.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
I was about to upgrade my home video system by adding a DVD player, and some surround speakers. Until this case is resolved in favour of the defendants (ie, essentially, the Linux community), I will not buy a DVD player, or any movies. I will also encourage others to do the same.
Us Nerds, Geeks, or whatever you want to call computer people are early adopters of new tech, if we stop buying their stuff, they may sit up and take notice.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
I've been trying to understand this encryption for a while. Obviously they inseret some codes that would tell a DVD writer not to write this data stream (simply to do without encryption, though encryption makes fitlersing impossibal without breaking the encryption)
Whats to stop me from taking apart a DVD writer (which I understand currently can'`t do this, but do to density of writing or some such, but eventially they will exist) and hooking it up to a dvd reader, again directly to the electronics. Granted this isn't easy, but I'm a geek, I can hack up enough controll software to do this. Note that I've not broken the encryption, I've just copied the moved encryption and all. This doesn't seem that difficult to me.
When Douglas Winslow says "I plan to party either way. I'll either end up watching or burning part of my DVD collection to celebrate the outcome of the hearing[...]" does he mean setting the DVDs on fire or "burning" new copies to distribute to others in mockery of the (adverse) ruling? I assume it's the former, in which case I'm curious about what fuel he plans to use: butane, propane, beer, what? These things are plastic coated aluminum, right? They don't burn so easily or so brightly. Maybe microwaving them would be more effective.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Yes this is offtopic, but the "dept." tagline reminded me of a really funny SNL Celebrity Jepordy where Sean Connery mistakes the category "Therapists" for something else :). You can find it here.
:)
Umm...to keep it a little on topic, hmmm...go open source! Good luck to the defendants!
-FGP
We don't want to look like a bunch of elves! They have a worse reputation than hackers.
---
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
From a search of CNN:
Activist defends DVD hack
DVD hack concerns delays audio products
Taking a trip back several months (dog years,) this was released waaaay before the hack. Now that prices are going down, this hack might be the break we are looking for, and a win for consumers:
Wait for DVD [not ready yet]
It looks like (from th eff's brief) that they are arguing that decryption is free speech (correct me if I'm wrong). This would be a huge win, since it could (by a good lawyer) be streched to reverse engineering.....
:) )
Disclaimer: IANAL! (but I do watch ally mcbeal every week...
Myddrin
I already have a DVD player - I don't own a VCR. I'm not willing to stop renting and buying DVDs just because the industry is launching a stupid lawsuit over creativity.
It's a great idea, but for most of us, it's not practicle.
kwsNI
I know I'm missing a piece of the puzzle here. How does CSS prevent piracy of a DVD? If the disc is read bit for bit, then written bit for bit (with encryption intact) how does the new disc or DVD player know that the copy isn't the original? I'm assuming the decryption comes in when it comes to converting the bits to video.
What about people that want to create their own DVD content? Does it have to be encrypted to work on DVD players? The cynical side of me says that what it's really about is controlling the dissemination of content. Or at least finding a way to stay in the loop in a world where people would otherwise no longer need media companies to publish for them. Admittedly, my knowledge of this subject is a little weak...thus all the questions.
numb
I have long been angry with the media industry's selfish policy of fighting technological improvements that give the consumer better audio or video playback and recording quality. This has been evident ever since the introduction of the DAT format in the early '80s. The industry has clearly decided that certain technology is "too good" for the consumer, because it would enable high quality copying for others. This may be a valid concern, but to resort to simpleminded protection schemes and lawsuits against equipment manufacturers shows their lack of concern for the enjoyment of their customers and demonstrates that profit is their only concern.
There's absolutely nothing to stop you from doing that, and that's part of the point of the case. They're making out like the community is aiding and abetting a bunch of pirates who are going to crank out $3 low-quality knockoffs of Jim Varney movies or something (or worse, that we're the pirates). Part of our point is that if we wanted to, we could easily do that without breaking the encryption, just as you described. (Never mind that it would cost a lot more than just going out and buying the DVDs already made. Never let logic get in the way of FUD, that's their motto.)
This is really about freedom and control. They're basically using a crappy, easily-broken encryption scheme to try to control a proprietary format, and then bleating because somebody broke their crappy encryption and now a bunch of us might be able to watch DVDs on our Linux players without waiting for someone to pay them a bucketful of money for the specs on how to decode the DVDs. I say, "No matter how thin you slice it, it's still baloney."
Argh, I can feel myself going into full rant mode. Time for my medication. I'll leave it to others to rehash the reasons why this lawsuit should not only be thrown out of court, but taught in first-year law school as a prime bad example.
--
Someone you trust is one of us.
DVD CCA is courting the press for several obivous reasons.
/. and like sites) have I heard our story. If we are planning on winning the case, we need an effective publicity campaign also.
1. Judicial Opinion. I don't care if justices are supposed to be impartial and whatnot, but they do watch the news and I am willing to bet that a fair amount of them study the case before it starts. If DVD can influence the judge in any way they will.
2. NSI Opinion. Remember eToys vrs eToy? eToys worked darn hard to make sure that everyone thought eToy was in the wrong. Because they did it successfully, they got NSI to step in remove the website from its DNS.
3. Public Opinion. DVD CCA is not an idiot and realizes that people may be the deciding key in the case. If the laywers for DVD can convince the judge that the public is against DeCSS (maybe by Xpert witnesses and such) or show that the public does not yet have the DeCSS source code enough to prevent CSS from be a trademark anymore they win the case.
The DVD CCA is doing an excellent job at its game. We (open sourcers) are doing miserably. Does anyone know of any article in FAVOR of us at any major news site? Probably not. I on the other hand have seen articles decrying us in my local paper (Minneapolis Star Trib, Pioneer Press) and heard about it on local radio stations. Nowhere (outside of
Laws be dammed, history has shown that public opinion often decides cases. (If it didn't we would probably have far less supreme court cases and the thing about that cuban boy Elian - wouldn't exist)
Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?
Is there a FAQ somewhere with the usual:
- Commercial DVD recorders cant do bitwise copy
- And yes they mess with DVD -> VHS too
- Region codes yada yada
- Reverse enginering vs Norwegian and US law
- Single layer vs multi layer DVD
- CSS licence agreement
Somebody, Pllllease?All opinions are my own - until criticized
If they succeed in scuttling open source DVD playing software, I won't buy DVD movies. My own computer has never run anything but Linux. Someday, if I have the time, I'll probably give FreeBSD a try. If I can't play DVD movies on a real OS, then they don't want my money.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
Rah! Rah! Go DeCSS!
Rah! Rah! Go DeCSS!
Rah! Rah! Go DeCSS!
We'll kick your ass!
You know we can,
And if we don't
Your DVDs we'll can.
--
Attempting to make up for a precieved lack of content... This slashdot article seems utterly pointless. More like a raise the masses and create flame wars and DARN to HECK all of the people who won't allow you to play your DVD on your non-windows alternative system of choice which just so happens to be ever so superior to the EXCREMENT that flows forth from the EVIL lair of Microsoft.
marotti.com
I'm the third defendant in the case. I *have* to appear becuase I live in California. I just wanted to say that I would really be grateful to the open source community if poeple made a good show of it.
I think we have a very strong case here. A reaffirmation of the first amendment and a good pounding out of internet law. I think the precidences set by winning a case like this will be beneficial to all of us.
On thing though... I jokingly mentioned to other defendants that I might attend this trial in a Metalica T-shirt with spiked up hair. That's what we call a bad idea. It's dress up day. We all need to look, hrmm, somewhat "professional". Remember, we're talking to a bunch of suits here.
Please, come if you can. Your presence will be felt by the judge, the plaintif, and us frightened (angry?) defendants. Hopefully we can really change some attitudes about open source here.
What amuses me so much about this case is that it seems the DVD CA doesn't even recognize the fact that the DeCSS effort is good for business! . It simply allows people on an otherwise non-supported platform to watch their movies. They've already purchased DVD drives manufactured by DVD CA members, and they've already purchased movies made by them as well. Further, with DeCSS technology now available, they will continue to buy those products, and people who otherwise wouldn't have will start. It's still very difficult to actually copy DVD's, as you need very expensive burning gear to do so. (AFAIK, regular DVD-RAM burners won't do.) Man, lawyers are dumb :)
(Start of article)
"Norwegian" DVD bomb a minor incident
First Hollywood postponed releasing new DVDs. Then several DVD-manufacturers filed against a group of hackers, among them a 16-year old Norwegian. But now Hollywood doesn't care that the DVD-codes are broken.
When 16-year old Jon Johansen and the rest of a hacker group found the codes necessary to copy DVD movies and distribute them on the Internet, it created a riot in the film industry.
To trial...
Several manufacturers postponed the release of both discs and new players to find new ways to encrypt them. The companies filed suit against the 16-year old and the rest of the group that took part in the production and distribution of the software, without gaining ground.
Johansen removed the link to the software from his home page, by his own saying because he didn't have time or resources to fight.
As expected...
Now the large movie studios in Hollywood say the software that removes the copy protection is a minor thing.
- We expected the protection code to be broken sooner or later. We were actually surprised that it took so long, says vice president of Warner Home Video, James Cardwell, to CNN.
- There is little or no gain in hacking our products. Blank DVDs cost more than our already made discs, and it takes hours to download the movies over the Internet, claims Cardwell.
DeCSS...
DeCSS is the name of the software that makes it possible to copy the discs directly from a DVD-ROM player to a computer's harddrive. the DVDs have a capacity of 4,7GB, which makes it impossible to copy it to a regular CD. Other software also available on the 'net makes it possible to alter the DVD-files to a regular CD format.
Since the VHS format for VCRs was launched, movie piracy has been a huge problem for the movie companies. They hoped that DVD would finally end this. Now it's clear that copying DVDs is as easy as copying regular videotapes.
(End of article)
Besides the usual mistakes about what this is all about, it seems that the movie industry is now trying to calm things down, turning around a bit. Trying to calm down the fire, maybe?
What I've never understood is why they are making examples out of people in the US. The US is small time for piracy. Sure there are FTP sites and the ilk, but it's small time compared to asia. Hong Kong, Singapore, China, Japan, Korea...this is whre pirating is a big time...open...business. They don't bother with CD-R or DVD-R. The materials are pressed with silk screen images. Other than being packaged in a normal jewl case you can't tell the difference. Last year I checked out an Electronics mall in Singapore. 8 Floors of computers and electronics...a sight to be seen for sure. There were a dozen stores selling pirate CD's and VCDs. I've heard now that DVD's are common too.
Dispite Singapores touch love law enforcement there is little done about this. I think it has to do with the fact that the cost of making and packaging a pressed DVD in volume is USD$2-3, that 800% mark up just doesn't sit right.
As far as region codes I saw that at most places in Singapore would put a mod in your DVD player that will allow you to play whatever you wanted to for about S$100 (USD$50).
i have terrible RSI in my left hand. this is strange because i use my right hand to hold my mouse.
imagine my surprise when i realised my left hand is the one i masturbate with!!!!
It as easy to copy as by Xeroc. That's the whole point of this case. You don't need DeCSS to copy the same way you don't need the Xerox to understand the Spanish language to copy an article in Spanish.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
It as easy to copy as by Xerox. That's the whole point of this case. You don't need DeCSS to copy the same way you don't need the Xerox to understand the Spanish language to copy an article in Spanish.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
DVD players+movies can not produce HDTV-level quality output.
When HDTV is finally mandated in the U.S. and other locations, you can betcha that Disney, Sony, Lucas Films, Fox, and other will be more then glad to sell you another copy of Star Wars and other titles in your library.
Seriously, though, I don't watch a whole lot of TV ('cept for Comedy Central - and they rerun things a lot) so I don't ever record anything. If there is something that I really want to see, I make sure I see it. If I have something more important to do - C'est la vie!
kwsNI
Isn't this to see if we can archive the bits on the media that we buy? Didn't we already win this case against the software industry back in the '70's?
That is when the software companies sued a few companies that were making archival copies of software. The judge in that case said that people can make copies of software for archival purposes. And that customers were allowed to defeat anti-copy measures that the manufacturer had installed on the media (floppy disks at the time.)
The case was a joke then and it is a joke now. The manufacturers what us to goto them for the hardware and software that are needed to play their movies. I bet that if the players didn't have this encryption scheme that they would be less than $75 right now.
So what somebody has broken the encrytion scheme. If they didn't want someone to do this they should have _patented_ the technology. Now they are whining in court that someone in Norway is giving away their trade secrets.
Well BooHoo, that person never signed an agreement with the companies that he wouldn't give away trade secrets. If that person had been an employee of the company then this argument would make a lot of sense.
Now they are claiming that all of us had agreed to not reverse engineer the software because of the shrink wrap agreement that comes with every player. I am so glad someone is finally trying to sue someone over shrink wrapped licenses. This will expose them for the sham that they are.
I don't agree to any contract that I haven't signed. Especially one that I don't even see until after I have already purchased something. Especially when these agreements effectively say that I can't do anything to the company if their product causes me harm and that the product isn't actually suitable for anything. And that I don't really own the product that I am holding in my hand and that I had just paid my good hard dollars for.
Of course I can sue the software company if I use their product in the way that it was marketed and it causes me harm. Of course I own the product and all of its bits if I paid money for it. And I own all the little bits on my own computer.
I will be so glad when the judge throws out the shrink wrap agreements for the sham that they are.
-- Never make a general statement.
The optimal mixture is to turn the aluminum and iron oxide into a fine dust and mix it 1:1. The combustion, at about 20 feet, is enough to vaporize carbon-steel. It will also weld things to pavement (and leave ugly warping). If you ever wanted to fake a martian landing, this is how you do it. Don't put it on any pavement you value, and keep it atleast 150-200 feet away from anything valuable. It is not explosive, but it burns incredibly hot. The goggles are a Good Thing(tm) too - don't forget them.
As long as it gets sent to a normal telly/monitor and normal speakers you can NEVER even make it difficult to copy. You just put the RF signal into a VCR/soundcard/video card or whatever.
I was thinking about having the speaker and player in one sealed box with no headphone socket etc. That would decrease the quality of the copy anyway.
Basically, If you eyes can see it and you're ears can hear it, the copying will be done - and is legal! As long as you own a copy of the film in some format you are allowed (last time I checked) to copy it to others formats for your own use.
Dear DVD Copyright Control Association;
I wish to inquire of you how I may return my extensive collection of DVD movies I
have acquired over the past year. I no longer wish to possess them, despite their
vastly superior quality, number of options, and other market-changing,
market-creating attributes. I wish full refund of my movies, less a reasonable fee
collected because I have viewed them a few times each.
You see; I feel I can no longer, in good conscience as a law-abiding American
citizen view these wondrous disks legally on my computer system. Though I
bought or was given as a gift each DVD legally, as well as own legal copies of the
DVD hardware and decoding software from my computer manufacturer, I have
installed two components onto my computer since it was purchased that, I fear,
jeopardize the legality of viewing DVDs on it.
Most relevant, I possess a copy of deCSS, the program you are undoubtedly
familiar with that allows users to copy DVD movies from their handy DVD-ROM
disk into unwieldy, 6+ gigabtye files on their hard drives. I downloaded this
software in the hopes that it would enable me to view my copy of The Matrix more
fully, or enjoy DVD movies with fewer problems due to disk access errors. It has
proved far to cumbersome, however (I only have 3 gigabytes of free space, which
are rapidly becoming full with MP3s from MP3.com and from my own CD
collection (MP3s don't skip during dancing at parties, you see).
But furthermore, I have followed the slow progression of the production of a
reliable and hardware-independent Linux/*nix DVD Player. The other component
I have modified my computer with, you see, is a secondary hard drive from which
I can boot the Linux operating system instead of Windows. Ideally, I would like to
use Linux as my primary operating system.
Your recent letter to the LiVid (DVD for Linux) developers and the creative
programmers who released deCSS, however, has me concerned. It seems that
there is no possibility that any development in a Linux DVD player would be, by
your definition, using secret technologies via reverse engineering, despite the fact
that the CSS technique was not patented. I fear that because I wish to view DVDs
on Linux, and that any Linux implementation would be illegal, that I can no longer
in good conscience view DVDs on any Operating System running on my
computer-it is, after all, the same computer which could view them illegally in one
OS, so how could viewing the same DVD in the other OS be possibly legal? What
if I upgraded my Linux partition one day after a DVD solution had been reached,
possibly 'illegally', and accidentally entered into Linux, failed to recognize the
difference, and played a DVD of mine? I would fear that the police would be
knocking at my door instantaneously, and this time they wouldn't be asking me to
turn down my music (or which Jazz singer that was, anyway?). Having no recourse
to achieve my fair-use of the DVDs which I have purchased without entering into a
legal gray-area, I wish to return my discs and receive refunds for them.
Please indicate the shipping address to which they should be mailed, and when I
should expect reimbursement of their cost and the rather large cost of shipping my
substantial investment into what I had hoped would be a brave new world of
theatrical experiences.
Regretfully,
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
But currently available writable DVDs won't help them make copies because the drives can't write the special sector. I've heard
that it is because the sector is burnt out on blank media.
Interesting... Does this mean you cannot create a DVD that is playable in an umodified player without specially prepared media?
If this is the case, then cracking the DVD encryption scheme would only make it possible to play a movie, or to copy it to a hard drive. You would not be able to burn a DVD that was playable in a DVD player, only other DeCSS based software players.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
...which has the added bonus of having the deCSS source code embedded in the comment blocks. I found it at savedvd.tripod.com. What a cool idea (hell, wish I'd thought of it)!
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
B35+ 0f Luck Fr@nk!!!! 1 \/\/i5|-| u w3ll!!
Z3r0K3\/\/859@AOL.COM!!!!!!!!!!!!#########
The brief, linked to in the article, is really good reading. I highly reccomend it even to those up on the facts of the case. Despite being lawyerly, it's readable and at times even funny.
--G
I think the real aim of the DVD CCA is to control piracy of the movie industry, not of an individual movie. To explain: If I dupe a DVD I can cheat some distribution company like Columbia or TriStar out of $20 in profits. But if I, as an independant filmmaker release my own DVD disc, I've cut them out of what could possibly be millions in revenues. DVDs, MP3s, CDRs the internet and a few other technologies allow content producers to completely and totally circumvent distributors.
If I was a distributor, I think this would scare me, badly.
What I think the DVD CCA is trying to do is to make DVDs difficult to produce. Can I produce a new movie and burn it to a DVD RAM? Probably. Will that play properly in a commercial DVD player? I don't know - but I doubt it.
I heard NPR's Marketplace visiting this story when I turned on the radio the other evening, and about the first words I heard were "so they can play DVD's on Linux". On further listening, it seems that this show had an accurate grasp of the purpose of the DeCSS software, and also an awareness of the distortion that DVD CSS is trying to promote. IMHO NPR has reinforced its reputation for integrity and thorough invesigation once again. Love 'em!
Obviously it's difficult to say anything meaningful; smarter folks than I have hashed this out pretty well and IANAL, as always. But someone made a good point about the Judicial Opinion. Public opinion may not sway the judges' actual decision, but it could make him ask the wrong questions. Like Godel, Escher, Bach suggests, sometimes just asking the wrong question can derail an argument. If the judge starts asking questions like "Why do you want to encourage piracy?" or "Is copying DVDs protected under the first amendment?" he's on the wrong track. Better questions are things like "Does encryption keep people from copying DVDs?" or "What, exactly, does DeCSS let you do that you couldn't do before?" or the coup de grace, "What law/contract/right is it alleged that the defendants even broke in this case?" My two cents.
The players tried to take the field. The marching band refused to yield...
I'm the only named defendant who showed up at the TRO hearing (the guy with the clipboard at http://www.lemuria.org/DeCSS/pics/)
;)
Come show your support of this cause. We want the judge to understand how much people/consumers care about this case. But dress appropriately.
We're trying to show the judge that we are not a bunch of copyright-infringing, trade-secret stealing hooligans.
Nice clothes go a long way to help prove this point.
The hearing is at 1:30pm on the 18th... see you there! Be sure to bring floppies and print outs of the source
-- Andrew Bunner
Correct me if I'm wrong, but AFAIK almost no DVDs (the "big company" DVDs, like Warner's and such, being the exception) available in Austria and Germany employ the CSS "protection" scheme... still, the discs play fine in every (region 2) player - so I guess it would be viable to just write the movies back to DVD unencrypted.
Then again, I guess there's some other information in that "hidden" sector (region code?) that might prevent the disc from being played on a regular DVD player... (but not neccessarily on a computer; the player software still has to go through the operating system... =)
Anyone know more about this?
np: Gas - Track 1 (Königsforst)
As always under permanent deconstruction.
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
The deCSS software is quite analogous. It's purpose is not piracy but to clone the software which plays DVD's. This is necessary for Linux since there is no alternative, but is completely justified for purely commercial purposes.
I'll put on my leather chaps, my red bandanna, and an old Sex Pistols teeshirt. And carry a pirate flag.
ESR will, of course, wear his Darth Vader costume.
An email message I sent a while back:
I've been working on new and interesting ways to almost kill myself.
As you may or may not know, I have this passing interest in metalworking. I've always wanted to build a rocket to the moon, and I figure that I'll need to know how to weld, cast and machine metal to do it. So I built a small foundry, according to a series of books entitled "Build Your Own Machine Shop From Scrap". Book one is "The Charcoal Foundry". Which I built. It's low-capacity; I can cast about a quart of molten aluminum. (Albeit poorly.)
Anyhow, back when I lived in Oklahoma, I bought a whole bunch of scrap aluminum from my welding instructor. (8 or 9 VW Bug transmission housings) And I also picked up some other large castings from work (IBM 3390 disk-pack housings) that were being thrown out.
These pieces are too large to fit in my tiny little crucible, so I would smash them to bits with a sledgehammer. But parts of the scrap were too heavy to be smashed, no matter how hard I tried. There was a paragraph about this in the foundry book, that suggested building a fire around any castings that were too heavy to smash with a sledge, and heating them till they were soft. I decided to try this.
So, last night, I crept down the road in the inky blackness to an abandoned barn that's slowly succumbing to the Mississippi foliage and has a large pile of broken timbers. I dragged the wood out to the road, and came back for it with the truck. Then I built a bonfire of the dry timbers, interspersed with VW transmission housings and 3390 disk pack cases. Lacking somewhere better, I built the fire on the 12x12 concrete pad that forms my back patio.
I was moderately safety conscious. I built the pile as far from the house as I could (which wasn't very far). I took the propane tank out of my grill and moved it to the other side of the house. I had the garden hose pouring water continuously into the grass. I had my kitchen fire extinguisher and welding gloves near at hand. Thus prepared, I lit the fire.
It took a while for the fire to catch. I was concerned that the pile had too many castings and not enough wood, and that the fire wouldn't spread all the way around. But eventually it was getting pretty hot, and I could break up some of the smaller castings with a light blow from a steel bar.
So I pulled out the big guns, and tried to hit one of the large castings with the sledgehammer. It broke, but it also sparked and sputtered and caught on fire. The metal was on fire. When metal burns, it has a flame that's quite distinctive from a wood flame. Wood burns yellow and red; metal burns white-hot like a welder's spark. I could definitely tell that there was a metal fire at the base of my bonfire.
Now, I knew that magnesium will burn, and titanium too. I knew that sodium and potassium will burn in water. I didn't know that aluminum would burn. I never really considered that the castings would ignite. Perhaps aluminum needs to be a magnesium alloy to support combustion. I don't know. Whatever it was, it was burning.
Metal fires are tremendously hotter than wood fires, which caused the rest of the pile to rapidly ignite from a nice controlled bonfire, to what I can only describe as a raging inferno from the depths of hell. Oh shit. So I grabbed the already-running garden hose and I tried to put the fire out. Unfortunately, this typically made things worse. Metal burns so hot that when water touches it, the water vaporizes explosively, showering the area with molten, burning metal droplets. The rate at which metal burns is limited by its surface area, and breaking up a molten metal glob by pouring water on it accelerates the process.
So I grabbed the chemical fire extinguisher and tried to use that. Which worked, somewhat. But a small kitchen fire extinguisher has about 4 seconds worth of charge in it, and did not appreciably diminish the fire before it coughed and ran empty. Ah, shit.
Fires, as I recall, are categorized into four classes: A, B, C, and D. I was planning on having a Class-A fire: paper and wood. Class B is an oil or grease fire; Class C is an electrical fire. But what I really had was the worst of all: Class D, a metal fire. They make special fire extinguishers for Class D fires. Unfortunately, I didn't have one.
At this point, the flames were shooting up about 15 feet into the sky. Every so often, the pieces of burning aluminum would pop, throwing sparks and metal droplets everywhere. To complete the scene, also note that I had the stereo turned up inside the house, so as you visualize it, remember that BB King is wailing in the background.
I did what I could. I had a big steel pole that I used to knock the fire apart, to dissipate the heat. I used the hose carefully to try to cool the fire down. I wore the welding gloves and dragged the burning timbers away from the fire where I could safely douse the wood with the hose.
People stopped by and offered to help. They had seen the sparks and flames from the road, shooting above the house. They offered to call the fire department, an offer that a wise man would have readily accepted. But if I were a wise man, I wouldn't have done this in the first place, now would I?
So I asked them to standby on the offer to call the fire department, and said I thought I was getting it under control. I was basically wrong, since the worst explosions, the ones that shot molten metal directly at the house, were still yet to come. But the fire was quieting down somewhat.
(The house is brick. But the roof is not.)
The problem that I had was that there was no obvious way to finish putting out the fire. I removed pretty much all the burning wood from the fire, and separated the metal fire into smaller fires, but how to put out the burning aluminum? All I had was water and a steel pole, neither of which really seemed to help. In hindsight, I also had a shovel nearby, which probably would have been the best tool. Hindsight is a marvelous thing, no?
So, with a combination of patience (just letting the metal burn itself out), and cautious, gentle spraying with the hose, I got the fire out. In the end, no damage to the house, no serious injuries. My patio is a mess, my fingers are a little singed. (I later discovered that the concrete under the fire was destroyed to a depth of 3-4 inches.) My scrap metal supply is largely vaporized. I have a large new supply of humility, and a moderately good story.
I'm sure there's some deep lesson in this cautionary tale, but I'm not precisely sure what it is. I guess the big lesson is that aluminum burns. Forget that they make engine blocks and piston heads from the stuff. It burns, I know.
"The simplest solution is to ignore your dead children."
Until about a few minutes ago, I was certain the one answer I'd heard over and over again, that the industry is completly wrong... was the right one. Not being an encryption scientist, open source guru or expert in any other way, I'll leave my doubts and questions for the above group to answer.
I help people learn how to use their computers from time to time, and the one thing I've told them is that anything that you can do to a computer, can be undone. Bit-copying DVDs will always be possible - expensive and impractical now, but possible. I don't see it as a huge source of worry for the industry yet.
But, why use DVD-ROMs at all? Right now, because they're convienent and we don't use terabyte hard drives. Yet. I remember a recent stat that mentioned hard drives are almost doubling in capacity - almost matching moore's law. My math isn't the greatest, but if we keep this progress, there are maybe 3-5 years before we're using hard drives that make DVDs look like current day floppies. You got 50 DVDs? Well, I got 100 on my hard drive kinda thing.
Right now, the industry has almost complete control of how DVDs are read, made and encrypted. With DeCSS, they've lost encryption 'control.' With some work, anyone can make a DVD player. Soon, their too-big-and-too-expensive-to-copy trick is gone with my 1.2 terabyte hard drive.
So, if we assume - and this I know is a *big* assumption - that the industry is smart (or can hire smart people), wouldn't they already know this? Wouldn't losing this and any other new encryption pose a major problem in 3-5 years?
No points to them though for going this route. I think some exec went a little half-cocked and now they've got a lawsuit they shouldn't win. What was done is completely legal(?) and that exec who pushed for this they-hurt-me-I-hurt-them-back lawsuit should get a education. Or read /. a little.
My Grand vision for my future Company:
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By Purchasing or Using this Product you agree on the following EULA (End User License Agreement):
1) We own all physical- and non-physical material and accompanying documentation of the Product, in all its forms and shapes. You may not alter, copy, resell or redistribute it in any way. We own it, not you.
2) We own your hands. You may not misuse or exploit weaknesses in the Product. All operations documented in the Users Manual must be followed in the exact sequence they were written. We have provided a safety feature for the Product if malicious breaches are detected (See section 7).
3) We own your social life. The Product is licensed to the First Time User(tm). To use the product, this User must Register and Submit all personal information to the Company. The License is personal to that User only and may not be overdrawn to someone else, not even your Dog or Fiancee. Only a Licensed User may operate the Product. Unregistered viewers is allowed view the contents by paying a double fee per session to the Company.
4) We own your wiring and privacy. The Product must stay On-Line with an Internet connection to the Company at all times so the Credit Card Transactions can work seamlessly. The Company reserves every right to control and inspect the Product remotely. The user must place the Product in the middle of the room uncovered.
5) We own your eyes and thoughts. You may not derive ideas or concepts about the Product's design, functionality or structure. The contents it provides you through normal operation is owned by each copyright holder under their own License. The Company reserves the right to upload blocks for content providers we find unsuitable.
6) We own your mouth. You may not critizise the Product in any form or forum, as all such information is owned by the Company. Every single review and article concerning the Product must be officially edited and accepted by the Company before going to print.
7) You may not use the Product after its expiration date. For your convinience a 7.2Kg TNT explosive is included free of charge which will automatically blow up our Package, so there's no need worrying about dates. Upgrades may be bought to delay the expiration date, but every Registered User is encouraged to Purchase new releases as they will most certainly be backwards-incompatible.
8) Every Registered User have an obligation to report all violations of this EULA they encounter to the Company. Failing to do so is in turn considered an even graver violation.
9) ALL VIOLATIONS OF THIS EULA IS CONSIDERED BREAKING FEDERAL LAW AND WILL BE PROSECUTED TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT OF THE LAW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!(These !!'s should REALLY make it clear once and for all..)
9) REMEMBER, SOME STATES STILL HAVE THE DEATH PENALTY. IF YOU ARE A NON-US CITIZEN, WE CAN DEAL WITH THE PAPERWORK AND PAY FOR THE ONE-WAY TRIP TO USA.
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Good luck with your futures.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Actually, magnesium burns better than aluminum since it doesn't form a hard oxide to smother the flame.
It should make you wonder how little PR the tech/OS community even tries to do, and how much it could really use in cases like this one.
Obviously CNN and ABC et al aren't feeling the need to troll Slashdot themselves for this story.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
You can burn graphite (pencil lead) with a 9V battery too.
And don't expect to use those batteries in your flashlight again if you've used them to start fires, the batteries get burned out very fast due to the high current and heat.
If the defendants lose, let's FUD DVD until it dies the way DIVX did.
You can:
1. Give away or sell at a very low price your DVD players on those forsale newsgroups.
2. Set up web sites that describes the many disadvantages of DVD (and not mentiong any advantage), using words as negative as possible while making it sound unbiased.
3. Tell everyone you know that DVD is not the way to go, and it is like DIVX in a lot of ways, and how VHS is superior to it.
OK folks. It was said the other day, it was said today, and now I'll say it again.
If you're going to show up in person to show your support, dress reasonably, be polite, and impress the hell out of anyone expecting a bunch of ranting nerds. A professional and mature show of support will go far in convincing the people that need convincing that this is a legitimate concern, brought forth by respectable and law abiding citizens. (and consumers to boot)
But by all means, do show up if you can!
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
[nudge]
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
Your presence will be felt by the judge, the plaintif, and us frightened (angry?) defendants.
I think that several of your codefendants have reason to be very angry. Contained in this page, I found a deposition by Harvey Shapiro, one of the plaintiff's weasel^H^H^H^H^H^Hlawyers, in which nearly every defendant (but not you, I see) is described as having "offered to sell unauthorized DVD copies of my clients' motion pictures".
One such site so described was http://openprojects.net where the Livid CVS and developers list archive were hosted. Now I've read nearly every post to that list since sometime in October and I've never seen anyone offer to sell any copyrighted material. I wonder if someone making a false accusation of this sort constitutes slander or libel.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
This is an interesting conflict of interest. The interests of those companies who make DVD movies are to sell as many units as possible. Yet, the goal of the DVD CA is only to sell licenses.
By providing the technology for decoding the information encoded in the units, the licences are in jeopardy. (I am talking here about stuff other than normal DVD players for Windows, such as DeCSS.) However, in today's world, the units still matter. Sure I'd buy a ten or twenty dollar DVD with a movie on it any day instead of using up more than a hundred dollars of hard disk space (in most cases) to store a decrypted movie. And redistribution of video is nowhere near in this picture. You can copy a DVD without decrypting its contents. And since the files are so huge, distribution over the Net is not much of a concern. The only problem I could forsee is someone clipping a small portion of the DVD video out and (a) watching it him/herself, (b) compiling it onto a DVD with other such clips and distributing it, or posting it up on the Internet for others to see. In any of those and other possible cases, the problem is much less than most people are considering. I could get pretty darn good quality out of capturing some video on an S-VHS tape and distributing that, yet there is no encryption on video tapes to begin with.
Basically: What's the problem? Why not worry about something else and leave these cool open-source people alone?
Show your support for our side. Protect freedom of speech, the copyright rules, and cool hacks.
A quick recap: The defendant bought a software/database in a retail store. The terms of the license limited use to 'personal use only'. Commercial-use licenses were available for a higher fee. The defendant than made the software/database available for a fee on his web site.
The defendant argued that it was a purchase because he was not able to read the license before he paid for the product so it was a purchase and the license did not apply.
The judge did not buy that arguement. First, the defendant bought the same software package the previous year and the terms of the license had not changed. Second, the license gave him the right to return it for a refund if he did not agree with the license. (Note: he did not try to return it for a refund. It would appear that buyers of laptops with Windows preinstalled that tried to get a refund are not bound by the EULA.)
None of the questions you asked were issues in the trial so their was no ruling on those. No court has decided if those particular restictions are objectionable on grounds applicable to contracts in general (for example, if they violate a rule of positive law, or if they are unconscionable).
I feel like picking a fight with everyone who thinks they are right. - Rainmakers
From the second letter they (as in the DVD-CCA) sent me:
"The Court denied DVD CCA's application for a TRO and set a date for the preliminary injunction hearing on January 14, 2000 at 1:30 p.m. The address of the Court is 191 North First Street, San Jose, California."
Of course, this is actually January 18th at 1:30pm (The judge had some sort of scheduling conflict on friday).
Am I the only person who thinks that this case may very well fail, on sound legal grounds?
/., a fair number of flagrant breaches of the decision, some of which will be harshly punished, and finally a deCSS underground.
There's been a lot of argument about how DeCCS is used to view, not copy, DVDs - and that a bit-by-bit copy can be achieved without it. Other people have already explained that it isn't that clearcut.
IANAL, but if I were the CCA I would present the following argument:
This algorithm is a trade secret. The algorithm was figured out by someone using the Xing decoder. They had clicked a box agreeing not to reverse engineer the algorithm when they installed it.
Hence the algorithm and deCSS source code is a trade secret which was obtained improperly. Therefore according to law, every copy or derivation of it is tainted and must be removed from the public. End of argument.
You must break that chain of reasoning somehow. Your arguments?
1. "He did not click the box to agree to that. We all know that programs can be installed with the EULA agreement stage bypassed, with a little hacking". I say - you must prove that this EULA was in fact bypassed in this case(of course you can't, there is no evidence around). Remember the Intel/AMD case, when AMD had to go to extreme lengths to _prove_ that they had figured out how intel's chips worked without reading the development documentation. Simiarly, the burden of proof is on you in this case. Since there is no evidence, you are stuck.
2. "He was a minor and so could not enter into a binding agreement not to reverse engineer the code". I say - in that case his parents are responsible for his actions. Regardless of who did it, the information was still obtained "improperly" and so deCSS is tainted. After all, it a minor robs a bank then whoever is considered legally responsible the crime was still committed. In this case, the information was obtained improperly.
3. "Those agreements aren't binding in Norway, where the algorithm was figured out". I say - okay, but as far as the US court is concerned he still made that agreement, and so the information was obtained improperly etc... This case is about restraining the transmission of this material in this country.
4. "Freedom of speech..." I say - Sorry, trade secrets supercede freedom of speech, as long as the information was obtained improperly. You may not like this, but it is the law.
5. "We are entitled to Fair Use of our purchases DVDs". I say - I do not disagree. If you can figure out how to play them without using improper means that is okay. Similarly you may make a copy, if you wish, for personal use. But
this case only pertains to deCSS and its derivatives, which were improperly obtained. [Whether the CCA may be acting unfairly by not supplying Linux decoders is another issue - an illegal Microsoft/DVDCCA pact would be rather hard to prove].
6. "It would be better for the world if..." This is not a legal argument.
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Hopefully someone can produce a better argument than the above. I'm not saying that I agree that the above constitutes a moral reading of the problem, but we are dealing with the law and morality and law have little in common. I think that the CCA will win the case, followed by a lot of flames on
Sorry if I'm pessimistic.
-type2
On a related note, SDMI, which exists solely to manage copy protection for music, managed to let the certificate expire on their secure web server. Remember, these guys want to manage the keys to all the audio content in the world. Here's their current certificate:
This Certificate belongs to:
www.sdmi.org
EMS
Global Integrity
La Jolla, California, US
This Certificate was issued by:
Secure Server Certification Authority
RSA Data Security, Inc.
US
Serial Number: 1D:37:FE:F6:B9:A4:C0:91:41:B1:F9:D7:1C:43:A2:A4
This Certificate is valid from Wed Jan 06, 1999 to Fri Jan 07, 2000
Certificate Fingerprint: DF:EE:C6:82:A9:E2:8E:27:91:5F:8E:ED:6D:06:0D:FB
Your wrong, once you decrypt the file, you write it to DVD-RAM as raw unencrypted. Just like any mpeg1 or AVI or mp3 file, it just will play.
1) Doesn't stop anybody from making a video tape copy of the DVD.
2) Doesn't stop organized pirates from making bit-for-bit copies.
3) Actually SHRINKS the size of the market for DVD movies, by artificially limiting the availability of playback devices.
The intent of the DVD CCA is clear, despite all their red herrings about pirating: they want to protect their revenues from licensing DVD players, NOT to prevent pirating.
Your wrong, and one can make a DVD content disk that is not ENCRYPTED, ie PORNO, all porno has no (C)
You can buy of the shelf software to encode vob files and let you master a disc to make original DVD discs with no encryption.
The purpose of CSS , IS INFACT to control DVD players which are a huge market and licence bonanza for them, this way they control other aspects of (C) .
now with CSS free, you will see unoffocial unlicenced players by smaller companies that can play DVDS any region with no macrovision etc , and most likely have added features to make coping to VHS easier than ever, who knows a DVD with VHS recorder in ONE?