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NYTimes, DeCSSm EFF, DVD, And Other Acronyms
mudpup writes: "The NY Times has a nice story about Martin Garbus a well-known New York trial lawyer and First Amendment specialist, who was brought on board recently to assist the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the DVD case.
My question is will The Motion Picture Association of America now be filing suit against the Times for linking to 2600's catalog of DeCSS mirror sites? Or will that Link disappear sometime before/after the West Coast wakes up this morning? "
In what we see as an important show of support from a major force in journalism, the New York Times has linked directly to our list of sites which currently house the DeCSS code.
The links have been a source of contention in recent weeks, as the MPAA and eight Hollywood film studios have sought to force us to remove them, claiming the links are the same as having the code published on our own site. We see it differently - while they may have been able to get a federal court to order the material off of our site, forbidding us from telling the world what other sites still have it would be a very ominous precedent to set.
Read the rest of their news item Here.
Read it here.
because the NY times has deep pockets. Intimidation doesn't work as well against a major corporation as it does against an individual with little money. There is really no threat of jail time against a corporation as there is with an individual, and any monetary penalties won't amount to much. The MPAA's plan of attack so far has been mostly to use playground-bully type tactics anyway.
If anything the NY times can use this as free advertising if the MPAA tried any lawsuits or other "tactics".
My quesion is will the MPAA sue /. for linking to a story that links to a site that links to sites that have the program??
- So, you cannot run ads as a business making false claims like "we say our cigarettes do not give you cancer"; that speech can be censored.
- However, a newspaper would be allowed to report "they say their cigarettes do not give you cancer"; that speech cannot be censored.
... under U.S. law, that is. I would presume that the dispute with 2600 would be along these lines.Now what's up with this judge? In the preliminary hearing he ruled:
How stupid is this? This criminalizes a form of reverse engineering. Now if I were reverse engineering for criminal intent, would I announce to the whole world what I had done? No! I'd freakin circumvent the bozotech in secret. The act of open-sourcing the exploit should clear any doubts of an engineer's non-criminal intent. Duh! But nooo, that ain't how it is. We have to criminalize the tech sharers, so the bozos in the bureaucracy can milk the corporate establishment for favors... y'know, some Senator calls his Federal Judge Law School buddy and asks him for a favor: "psst, hey skippy, let this injunction stand 'kay? just think of it as payback for when I took you to the hospital and waited while you got your stomach pumped."
Sometimes the law is so stupid it makes want to stick hot pokers in my eyeballs.
I took this from the article linked to. DeCSS does not increase the threat of movie piracy and here is why. DeCSS is being argued that you can copy a movie onto your hard drive and thus can post it on the internet. You can get an MPEG-2 of a DVD movie from some of the players that are on Windows. If all you wanted to do was post an MPEG-2 you could either set up a huge buffer for the movie in the player or use on of the utilities out there taking advantage of the player. In fact most would see it as more of a pain in the ass to compile DeCSS then to just use the tools already out there. That nulls the comment above because if DeCSS is a tool for piracy it is nothing more then a redundancy.
Molog
So Linus, what are we doing tonight?
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
f the judge's view is correct, Benkler said, then the Digital Millennium Copyright Act "does something no copyright law has ever done -- it extinguishes fair use," he said.
Fair use, after all is the crux of this case, regardless of what the MPAA would have you believe. I am confident that jurors will understand that this basic right cannot be abrigded.
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
04/28/00
In what we see as an important show of support from a major force in journalism, the New York Times has linked directly to our list of sites which currently house the DeCSS code.
The links have been a source of contention in recent weeks, as the MPAA and eight Hollywood film studios have sought to force us to remove them, claiming the links are the same as having the code published on our own site. We see it differently - while they may have been able to get a federal court to order the material off of our site, forbidding us from telling the world what other sites still have it would be a very ominous precedent to set.
The action by the Times comes in an article in today's electronic edition. What makes it particularly significant is this paragraph in which our attorney, Martin Garbus, is quoted:
At the bottom of the page, they do precisely that, linking not only to 2600, but to "2600's catalog of DeCSS mirror sites".
I did... ok, it was only $35, but it makes a difference. Perhaps it's time to slashdot the EFF again? Join here, or contribute directly to the DVD Defense Fund here. "Make a special gift to help EFF defend against the movie industry's attempt to criminalize open-source coding."
They've got a point...
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In addition to joining the EFF, you can also contribute directly to their DVD defense fund, to help pay for lawyers like Mr. Garbus. If you can, put your money where your mouth is! The page is here.
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Already Links directly to the DeCSS code itself.
m e_searchbox&sv=IS&lk=noframes
e _searchbox&sv=IS&lk=noframes
What is the big deal?
Don't believe me? Follow these steps.
Start at their page www.mpaa.org
Click on members
Click on Walt Disney - which takes you to disney.go.com
The dropdown box that has "Where to Go" in the upper left corner contains go.com. Click that.
Click through to the Go Network.
Type DeCSS in the search area.
http://www.go.com/Titles?col=WC&qt=DeCSS&svx=ho
That's the URL I got. Looks like DeCSS code to me.
Of course, if linking to 2600.com is the problem, just type 2600 in the search link.
http://www.go.com/Titles?col=WC&qt=2600&svx=hom
That's the URL I get. Oh well. I guess the MPAA should sue itself. It clearly links itself to DeCSS. In fact, one of its members is perhaps one of the biggest offenders. go.com has thousands of links to DeCSS code.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.