A New DeCSS

This guy has written a fairly amusing program called DeCSS and is asking people to distribute and link it in an effort to make things more difficult for the legal boys trying to track down the other DeCSS. The page has a lot to say, and this is definitely an interesting way to show support.

Comments

I bet the government loves people like you...

[Danse]

Face it danger is not a good thing and I would rather have my pride/honor/respect/and freedom than play DVDs on unsupported OSs.

Yeah, and I'd rather have my freedom than be allowed to drive a car wherever I like without being monitored.

I'd rather have my freedom than be able to view whatever I wish on the Internet.

I'd rather have my freedom than be able to decide for myself what my children should or should not be taught.

I could go on...

Maybe we should all just quit trying to change the things that we think are done for the wrong reasons or that are unjust, or that are just plain stupid. I'm sure it would make things a lot easier for the government if we would all just shut up and do as we're told. Maybe you should get out there and lead the wooly resistance against those who would dare to refuse to let the government or corporations take their rights away without a fight. Baaa! Baaa!

And furthermore...

[chrisd]

Here's another cool bit, you can post the code and say it's for cascading style sheets, but actually have the download link download the Real DeCSS, say off of the openDVD.org site :-)

Lets make thier jobs -hard-.

Chris DiBona
VA Linux Systems

--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
Pres, SVLUG

CmdrTaco Forgot one thing

[SgtPepper]

It's actually been at FreshMeat for a good part of the day, it's announcement is here But i just wanted to thank the Cmdr for finally posting the damn thing ( i had only submitted it three times today ) the nice spiel is too damn funny for anyone to pass on :)

( Warning, mildly offtopic thought follows)

I did have one theroy though...don't know if it was brought up before...what if someone posted a wav file ( because mp3 would be to "underground" ) of them reading the DeCSS ( as in the DVD program ) source code?


Sgt Pepper
Lame Sig Shamelessly Ripped from
Fortune:

A mind is a wonderful thing to waste.

Re:What the hell is this for? FAIR USE

[Nimmy]

You do have a point, and I agree that many DeCSS advocates are acting childlike, but you overlook one essential doctrine that has pervaded many US court cases (of which this is one). This doctrine is called "Fair Use" and it essentially states it is unfair and illegal to restrict the use of a product you have sold to a consumer for any reason other than legal contractual obligation. For example, it is illegal to prevent resale of a product unless it would be illegal to sell it (ie food packages without ingredient lists). In my opinion, banning DeCSS falls under this blanket, preventing legitimate DVD owners from watching movies the way they want. I agree, perhaps the communtities reaction has been overzealous, but this is an important legal case for consumer rights (possibly the second most important rights after human rights) and deserves most of the attention it is getting.

My (poorly written) $.02
--Nick

And another thing

[jabber]

Is there some reason why the one true DeCSS hasn't been reimplemented under a different name (or 3 dozen)?

After all, the source is a matter of public record now, and it's been on T-shirts and all... Why not re-implment it in any and all programming languages out there. Java, Pascal, Fortran, Perl, VB, Befunge (ferchrisakes!)..

Differently named, all of them.

This new DeCSS is litigation chaff, and we should follow the blow with another, and another.

Let's add the string "DeCSS" to comment fields of web pages, to give the spiders and bots something to chew on. Let's integrate the DeCSS source code into web page background images.

DeCSS (original) in a highly obfuscated form

[griffjon]

http://www.sarahandcasey.com/decss/cssstory.txt

Is the entire css auth code in, well, story form. It's hilarious.

New DeCSS code

[CodeShark]

Now I'm mad...

I went through all of this work to set up my wonderful-est web site, with beautiful copyrighted content, with region coding so that you viewers in France see one version, which I charge more for by the way, and one in Australia which implements filter eluding porn links (this one's real expensive), and the regular cheap page for 'Mericans with all the banners you could ask for, doubleclick.com cookies in all the images, etc. My revenue needs to be protected by all of this CSS coding.

I send these pages encrypted in SSL, and now you're running this decryption program that removes my region encoding, and displays my copyrighted text in plain HTML for the world to see. Why, you reverse engineered a device which removes the encoding from my copyrighted web site content and are distributing it.

I'm gonna sue under the DCMA. ;-)

(Would somebody please explain this to the judge in the real deCSS case in New York, just in case he doesn't already get it?)

A suggestion...

[TrevorB]

The next version of DeCSS should include a "garbage" text file with just enough filler text (Perl poetry, perhaps? Anti-MPAA manifesto?) such that decss.tar.gz and decss.zip have EXACTLY THE SAME FILE SIZE AS THE REAL THING!

That will really mess with their heads... :)

Boy you people like living dangerously

[slashdot-terminal]

Are you people lawyers or know a lawyer in the immediate family?
Look I am as supportive as the average nonDVD owning/playing person in this world can be but don't people ever learn to avoid trouble?
Even getting sued is a major expense eevn if you are innocent (I know), couple this with public embarassment and the problems that it can lead to and I think that it is a thourally bad thing. I actually looked at this program and he author's page on freshmeat at least an hour before it got posted to slashdot; and my opinion is pretty much unchanged.
People don't like drug laws and such and there have been many, many, many attempts to override them through similar attempts at civil disobedience; however all of these have failed and over 50 years later we still have unpopular drug laws and they are still enforced. Same with these types of things. Although the vocal minority of people (face it not everyone really ownes such equipment as a general rule and it becomes even smaller when you look at the entire population).
Also please tell me exactly how this does anything at all? So I have a program that has the name of another unpopular program. Does this really change anything? So if I decide to help out say say a fanatical regime in Iran does that mean I should rename my linux distro to Komini Linux? Face it danger is not a good thing and I would rather have my pride/honor/respect/and freedom than play DVDs on unsupported OSs.
Flame me if you like but I am interested (I mean really interested) why this kind of thing was selected by taco in the first place? Does he realize that VA and the individuals who control his job could end up being forced to possibly even realease him from employment? Yeah I guess the slashdot croud does like to live dangerously.

Sounds good in theroy

[Tassach]

This sounds like a good idea, at least in theroy. However, is it really going to be effective? I don't think so. The DeCSS suit named (IIRC) 200 John Doe websites, and I don't believe they've put actual names to any but a fraction of those (Wasn't 2600 mag of the "John Does"?). It dosn't look like they are making any real effort to track down ALL the DeCSS sites on the web; they are going after high-profile people.

I think a more effective way to fight the insanity would be to use the legal system against them. If say 10,000 people were to file small-claims suits against the MPAA, that would really hurt them and divert their resources away from DeCSS.

Since IANAL, I don't know on what grounds a whole bunch of people could sue MPAA over; but I'm sure that there's a lawyer out there who does. If a lawyer would put together a nice package instructing people how to sue the MPAA in small claims court (sample documents, typical costs, what to say & not say, etc) and not have it thrown out or exposing themselves to a counter-suit, I for one would be willing to spend some money and time being a thorn in MPAA's side.


"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'