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The Village Voice On The DVD Wars
Phantom writes: "The Village Voice has great story (here) about DeCSS, 2600.com, and the legal battle about to ensue. Looks like the MPAA may be in some trouble. " Well written piece - things have been quiet here for a while, but I think both sides have been lining up necessary support. The lawyer, Martin Garbus, is going to be defending Eric Corley aka Emmanuel Goldstein, and is a /very sharp/ cookie.
"The lawyer, Martin Garbus, is going to be defending Eric Corley aka Emmanuel Goldstein, and is a /very sharp/ cookie. "
I heard the MPAA hired a guy who was described as "a very fudgie brownie"! Doesn't that trump a sharp cookie!?!? Or is that cold ice cream that does that?
Dang it I'm no good at this lawlyering stuff! I'm hungry!
You can't falsely shout "Fire" in a crowded theatre.
Actually, the reason you can't shout "Fire" in a crowded theatre has nothing to do we free speech and everything to do with contract law. When you buy a ticket you are essentially entering into a contract of sorts with the movie theatre - in exchange for your money you are allowed to watch the movie. If you shout "fire" and everyone leaves, essentially you have caused a breach of that contract by infringing on everyone else's viewing of the movie and the theatre's showing of the movie.
As for live stage theatre, the same principle applies.
I'm not a journalist, but I play one on slashdot
Periodically, I feel obligated to remind people that the famous phrase "shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic" (actual quote) is not only prone to abuse, it was born of judicial abuse
;->
Justice Holmes coined this memorable phrase in Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919). Schenck printed 15,000 leaflets: the front contained the text of Section I of the 13th
Amendment, and the flip side of the leaflet had phrases and slogans like: "Do not submit to intimidation", "Assert your Rights", "your right to assert your opposition to the draft", and "If you do not assert and support your rights, you are helping to deny or disparage rights which it is the solemn duty of all citizens and residents of the United States to retain."
Schenck spent 10(?) years in jal for merely telling his citizens their constitutional rights The 'fire in a crowded theater' argument was used to allow the Supreme Court uphold his conviction
This is not a precedent that should be blithely tossed around without noting the history of abuse that it engendered.
This court ruling, and others explicitly based on it led to the Pulitzer Prize winning author Upton Sinclair was arrested for trying to read the text of the First Amendment at a union rally (1923) and many others being arrested for belonging to, or participating in, groups espousing views regarded as "radical" by the government in this period (I'm talking about unions and religious societies, not the Communist Party or subversive groups)
In short -- "the crowded theater" can and has been something as seemingly innocuous as Slashdot, and the cry was not false Better put a lawyer - a criminal lawyer - on retainer before expressing any opinions in public
_____________
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
The article makes the good point that the open source / hacker community don't want DeCSS to pirate, only to watch their DVDs on Linux. However, its DeCSS for 'doze that could be the problem. Using the windows version and some easy to download tools, "script kiddies" and their contemporaries can easily re-encode dvds to lower bandwidths & other codecs, say to put them onto one or two cds, or post a 180kbit version to the web. Its these sort of people who are giving a bad name to the DeCss lot, and whos actions are only going to increase, which is a shame for those of us who use it for its oringinal use.
I don't think even the script kiddies are that interested in DeCSS. It's completely unnessecary for decrypting video streams if all you intend to do is make a copy. Any DVD player has to decrypt the stream before it goes to the display. Intercepting the stream on the way to the display would have been a lot easier if that was what it was really about--isn't there software for Windows already that does this?
Another thing I'd like to point out is that the value of DeCSS is not just that it allows Linux users to watch DVD's. DeCSS without the source would probably be ignored by OSS people as well as the MPAA. It's the availability of the source code that makes it so important.
With the source code we can make as many different DVD players for as many different operating systems as we want. This includes embedded operating systems that could run on more traditional DVD players like the kind that people hook up to their TV's.
It subverts the whole region coding scam that the MPAA put into place which effectively allows them to censor movies for certain areas. I can buy a movie made in a foreign country, but I can't play it in the US unless the foreign film company has a US region code on it.
Take the Stanley Kubrick movie "Eyes Wide Shut" for example. In the US only the censored version of the movie is available as far as I know. (I'm not sure if it's out on DVD yet or not, but that's not my point.) My point is that the MPAA wants to control who gets to see what and where.
I think that the OSS guys are concerned about more than just watching DVD's in Linux--like freedom of choice and speech. The MPAA is concerned about something other than piracy--piracy is just a convenient excuse although it's innaccurate. Things like price-fixing are a lot easier if you can restrict where people get playable DVD's from.
numb
No. CSS doesn't prevent anything. It is just a scrambling algorithm, and DeCSS undoes it. The connection to VHS is this: Let's say that you want to build a player and decide to buy the secret of the algorithm from DVD-CCA (which doesn't make sense these days, since it is no longer a secret). As part of your agreement with DVD-CCA, in addition to paying them a lot of money, you have to agree that your player will add Macrovision to the video out. Macrovision is a method of putting some extra junk in the signal that usually does not interfere with TVs, and usually does interfere with VCRs. The net effect is that it makes it hard for some VCRs to accurately record the output of the DVD player.
So anyway, CSS doesn't interfere with VHS. It's just that the contract to get CSS requires that players implement Macrovision, and that makes copying to VHS inconvenient. And of course, if you create a player by using the publicly available information about CSS, then you don't need to make and agreement with DVD-CCA, and the whole Macrovision issue becomes moot.
Nope. It's a copyright and trade secret issue, not a speech issue.
IANAL, but I think that, in general, RE is allowed for other purposes too. But in this case, DMCA specifically outlaws some uses of RE, but REing for interoperability is exempt. (That is good news too, since this whole case is about whether or not MPAA has to tolerate interoperability.)
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
A company cannot criminally prosecute you, only a government can. A company can sue you in civil court and the First Amendment is not and never has been a defence against that. In any case, First Amendment is binding only on the government, not on private companies.
Sure, you can only be sued by a company, not hauled off to jail, but they can otherwise make your life miserable to where a prison would be preferable. That being said, the first ammendment still applies to private individuals as well. If I walk with a picket sign in front of a business, I can't be stopped with a lawsuit as long as I'm factually correct or expressing my opinion. Sure, there are municipal ordinances saying how I can do something like this or where, but I can't be stopped because this is exactly what the first ammendment is about.... I'm free to say what ever I want and there is nothing you can do to stop me.
A (somewhat) recent encounter between the President of the People's Republic of China and US President Clinton illistrates this point a little more clearly. At the time, the movie "A Walk in Tibet", staring Brad Pitt, was being widly distributed in movie theaters throughout the United States. President Jiang requested that President Clinton force the movie theaters in the US to stop playing this movie, because it portrays China as an agressor country in a manner that the Chinese government didn't appreciate. I'm sure it was a little awkward to explain that not only would President Clinton probabally not do something that raw, he didn't even have the legal authority to even require something like that. Furthermore, an "offical" plea not to watch a movie like that would actually be like free advertising to promote a movie like that here.
The reason why people defend the first ammendment is that the right to speak freely is usually the first citizen privlege to disappear during a crisis. And not everything that can be said about you or anybody else is always pleasant to hear, so there are always some struggle to restrict that speech or discussion. Especially when you are in a position to be able to stop that speech.
Garbus may be sharp, but let me remind you that he is not working on this case for free. We at the EFF need to send him large checks every month, and that only comes from the donations of our members and supporters.
Have you made a bundle from open source and open standards? Donating appreciated stock gives you a double tax deduction and can even be done when the stock is locked out under certain provisions.
Does your company benefit from the right to reverse engineer? Does it want reverse engineering to be prohibited on copy protection devices? Does your company benefit from open discussion of cryptosystems and their flaws?
If this is true, make the business case to your company as to why these rights need to be defended.
Go to EFF's web site to find out how to join or donate. Sorry about the ad, but this thread wouldn't even exist if not for the donors who have come forward so far. In spite of the generous donations we have raised only a fraction of what this case will take if it goes the supreme court as expected.
end beg break
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
I don't buy DVDs, I don't plan to; yet I support DeCSS. Why you ask? Because I believe it's wrong to make software illegal, especially when no laws were broken in its creation. I am against the MPAA because I am against further restriction of individual rights in favor of corporate demands to make more profit.
/., on both sides of the issue, misunderstand the legalities 90% of the time.
The arguments presented on
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
One thing I repeatedly saw in this article is the phrase 'get it', as in certain people (Garbus, hackers, etc.) 'get it' and certain other people (the MPAA) don't 'get it'. I love it when a group of people on either side tell others how things should be and when the other side doesn't agree, they say, "You just don't 'get it', man!" Personally, I think Corley's a numbskull. The court tells him to quit distributing DeCSS so he goes out and provides links to it. It's not a hard argument to make that he's at least aiding the distribution of the material. It would've been just as easy to let others provide links. God knows there's enough sites, and hell, all you have to do is link to the filed briefs.
The MPAA's a bunch of morons as well. The article points this out as well as they are attacking the author of the DeCSS code when they could be attacking known piraters in Asia who are actually producing illegal material.
As for the argument of free speech, well, hell, I guess I don't 'get it'. I understand why linking as an activity should be considered free speech (possibly, although the court orders people to shut up all the time, and when they break that law they're found in contempt), but DeCSS as free speech? Are you saying that all code should be free speech? If I write a virus that destroys half a hard drive and distribute it and some government or company criminally prosecutes me, can I claim my free speech rights or is it still illegal? I sure as hell hope it's the latter, because code is not the same as speech. Words may hurt feelings, but they can't damage physical property or rights (except in the case of libel or slander). Code has the potential to be much more destructive.
Personally, I think DeCSS is the wrong battle to be fighting for both parties. But then again, I don't claim to 'get it'.
True that they want to prevent piracy. But the ultimate goal is to place the consumer in some type of marketing pay-per-view big brother hell.
By controlling the playback mechanism, it won't be long before they can legally require you to pay for every play, or inform them that you are playing the media. Guobblemints and corporations BOTH want this.
Think back to the Lewinsky/Clinton impeachment trial and ask yourself if you want all of your media viewing habits disclosed at your next civil/criminal/divorce/custody court hearing. Even if they keep info out of the marketers hands, if the info exists in databases, the judge can demand it.
CSS is the Content Scrambeling System. It is an encryption that is used on the raw video/audio on the DVD to prevent reading the data. You can still copy the encrypted video/audio data byte for byte from the DVD. It has nothing to do with VHS copying.
2. From the article: "The First Amendment also protects a process called reverse-engineering, which was used to create DeCSS. Reverse engineers take things apart in order to learn how to put them back together in a better form. In other words, to build a better mousetrap. The right to take things apart--whether breakfast cereals or pharmaceutical compounds--is a time-honored tenet in American law, held to encourage innovation."
Is that true? Is reverse engineering part of the First Amendment?? Isn't it covered under patent law? Aren't we talking about copyright law? And isn't reverse engineering only protected for purposes of interoperability?
Well it is protected. You can take stuff apart to see how it works. It wasn't a movie that was taken apart. It was the software, specifically the player, that is used to decrypt the data on the DVD to get the keys. There would not be different brands of cars if reverse engineering was illegal. There would not be generic drugs in the pharmacy if it were illegal. Mac users would not be able to play PlayStation games if it were illegal.
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!
If the above phrases are true (and frankly I'm a bit sceptical), then somebody is writing lousy software (or they're writing it in perl or something equally inappropriate for the task). This goes double if it's a driver for something that offers hardware acceleration for DVD playing, like the Hollywood card.
For comparison, under Windows (yeah, I know, but there's no Linux software) my puny little 233MHz Winchip (supports MMX and 3Dnow! but otherwise is essentially a 486 in drag - 156 bogomips) plays DVDs (using PowerDVD) at a viewable frame rate (it isn't 30 fps, probably more like 20) with no sound problems. All this with software decoding (the cheap VGA card doesn't add any support either).
There are Linux software solutions that require a couple of passes -- decrypting the VOBs and then playing them via eg mpeg2play -- if any driver for hardware decoding is worse than that, the only excuse is that it's a debugging version and must be writing a ton of stuff to a log file somewhere.
(Of course, current solutions are for strictly linear playback, you miss out on some of the extra features like branching or multiple camera angles.)
-- Alastair
Nah .. my DVD player plays all regions without me having to do anything. Of course, originally it doesn't, but there's a nice little kit for the Sony 715 that removes the regioncheck and macrovision completely, at the same time ...
I buy all my DVDs from Canada - cheaper, and you get more extras than on the region 2 versions.
it's in my head
That seriously sucks... he can't represent Corley on DVDs because he's representing Scholastic on some other thing? Those cases are probably so far apart it's not funny. Except, of course, that they're under the same global media conglomerate.
It'll be really nifty when all of the world's media are owned by the same corporation, and it's nearly impossible to find a lawyer to represent you in a case against them, because all of the law firms are involved with the megacorp in one way or another....
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A very sharp cookie? Sounds painful.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Perhaps the best hope is to compare cracking code with criticism, parody or satire which are already protected. All relate some original work (CSS), and are published without the consent of the original author (MPAA) and usually in the face of his vigorous objections.
The lawyer seems to have worked out an intriguing twist on the DeCSS case. While the DMCA is ostensibly about regulating copyright and hence well within the legitimate purview of Congress, it does have First Amendment implications. The real question will be whether the prohibition on publishing cracking code is seen as a necessary limitation on Freedom of Speech.
Freedom of Speech is _not_ absolute. You can't falsely shout "Fire" in a crowded theatre. Nor can you slander or libel others. The issue will boil down to whether the cracking code is a separate work. We all know it is, but do Judges? They will have to be convinced, and some have shown themselves capable [Penfield].
I went a bought a Creative DXR3 decoder card as a package part of Encore. It is based on a Holywood chipset, and acording to them, this is a very good thing.
I have been using Windows 98 for some time now, as I am an avid Quake 3 player, but with the recent changes in NVidia's beta Linux drivers, I can go back to Linux for this.
Windows 98 is really getting on my nerves - I cannot stand the crashes any longer, and have investigating alternatives. There is one common problem (apart from ther not-so-big problem of NT4 and DirectX 7), and that is: DVD playing!
There JUST AINT NO SUPPORT FOR NON_WIN98 users!
So I'm basically stuffed. Creative has no info on their site regarding this, leaving me, the customer, totally in the dark.
If it was not for my extensive movie collection, I would have been running Linux long ago. (as my primary games machine - since I already do most of my work on Linux)
I have a large collection of original DVD's, including quite a couple that our local distributors have no intention of importing. I don't think I will ever pirate it, and see all this ZONE shit as really a drag... fortunately I hack my drive and software with Remote Selector 1.74, or otherwise I would really be stuffed.)
So I really really hope this DeCSS case will get things sorted out propperly... as I have paid quite substansial (3rd world income, you see...) amounts for this, and am totally legal, and for my troubles I get screwed.
Hehe... talk a lot, don't I.
'nough said.
Yet another reason why megagiant supercorporations such as AOL/Time-Warner suck.
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I loved this from the article:
A newspaper like this one, for instance, would be forbidden from telling its readers how to find the source code to DeCSS on cryptome.org.
Cute.
The brief argues both that DeCSS itself is expressive speech and that links (to it or other sites) are communicative and should not be subject to the prior restraint of an injunction. It frequently emphasizes that even though non-traditional, 2600 is news media and is entitled to the same constitutional protections as the New York Times.
It strongly disputes plaintiffs' claim of "irreparable injury" -- necessary to maintain a preliminary injunction -- on the grounds that the studios have been crying wolf for months over "piracy" but have yet to demonstrate that DeCSS is used to copy DVDs. Further, it argues that DeCSS must be allowed to facilitate fair use of DVD movies and that DeCSS is exempt from the DMCA as part of a reverse engineering effort.
The brief is supported by a set of declarations from Harold Abelson, Andrew Appel, Chris DiBona, Bruce Fries, John Gilmore, Robin Gross, Lewis Kurlantzick, Eben Moglen, Matt Pavlovich, Bruce Schneier, Barbara Simons, Frank Stevenson, Dave Touretsky, David Wagner, and John Young.
For more on the case, see Openlaw/DVD/. Openlaw participants will be drafting an amicus brief.
-- Openlaw: Fighting for fair use and the public domain
Until this is resolved in favour of Truth and Justice (tm), even without considering free speech issues, my fallback position is that if MPAA isn't interested in my business as a Linux user, I'm not interested in their products.
Got a beef? Plug a name into the Bizarre Rumour Generator!
The lawyer, Martin Garbus, is going to be defending Eric Corley aka Emmanuel Goldstein, and is a /very sharp/ cookie.
Look a little further in the article and you'll see that there is a good chance that Time Warner can stop Garbus from defending Corley:
On April 25, attorneys for the movie association filed a motion to disqualify Garbus from the case. Garbus's firm, it turns out, represents Scholastic in an unrelated case. Time Warner, a member of the association, owns Scholastic, and you're not supposed to defend and attack the same client at the same time. This technicality may be enough to kick Garbus out of the suit. "He probably has a 50-50 chance," speculated one legal observer close to the action.
That would seriously suck. I appreciate the hard work of the EFF attornies, but Garbus has an awesome track record and is well respected in the legal system. Losing his support will be a great loss to Corley and anyone else that cares about things like fair use.
numb
Preliminary linux drivers can be found here:
http://hem.fyristorg.com/henrikj/em8300/
if you're ticked you can't play DVDs in Linux... why not go out and buy a cheep $180 player
Pigheadedness. Its not so much that Linux users want to use their machines to play DVD's. Its more that they object to somebody else telling them that they can't use a piece of software for legal reasons.
The article makes the good point that the open source / hacker community don't want DeCSS to pirate, only to watch their DVDs on Linux. However, its DeCSS for 'doze that could be the problem. Using the windows version and some easy to download tools, "script kiddies" and their contemporaries can easily re-encode dvds to lower bandwidths & other codecs, say to put them onto one or two cds, or post a 180kbit version to the web. Its these sort of people who are giving a bad name to the DeCss lot, and whos actions are only going to increase, which is a shame for those of us who use it for its oringinal use.
This post will enter the public domain 70 years after my death, unless Disney buys another extension.
This is one of the most popular examples used when people talk about the limits on freedom of speech. While it's a valid example, I once heard someone tell an amusing tale about it.
I was talking to an old friend several years ago, who at the time was majoring in psycology. She told me about this one study she did concerning people's perceptions of catchphrases.
One of the ones they asked people about was some variation on "you can't shout 'fire!' in a crowded theater". The results were interesing, and showed how this particular phrase is perhaps becoming a little antiquated.
- A majority of people attempted to clarify the statement, most often asking, "You mean, like a movie theater?" (So much for the arts.)
- An overwhelming majority (90%+, IIRC) stated that if they were in a crowded (movie) theater and someone shouted "fire!", if alarms weren't going off, they would most likely completely ignore the person. (A significant portion of the respondants stated something along the lines of "it'd probably just be kids.")
I guess it takes more to incite a panic in today's jaded society. Perhaps it's time for a new metaphor for the argument of limits on free speech?"You know, there are limits on free speech. I mean, c'mon, it's like, you can't just reverse-engineer content-protection mechanisms and post the code on the Internet or something." :)
Assignment #1-Read this article.
Assignment #2-Read it again.
This how you write a properly researched, low rhetoric article about a tech/sociological subjet. See how separate subjects aren't intermixed as if they were equal.
Assignment #3-Read the article again.
Assignment #4-Read the NYT DeCSS article
Assignment #5-Go back and read that awful mp3.com 'article' that you wrote last week.
Seems a bit odd that the lawyer Martin Garbus was just previously defending these MPAA bastards and is now fighting against them. Anyone have any ideas what that case was concerning? That aside, it would seem only obvious that should the judge rule for this technicality then the only *right* thing to do would be for Garbus to quit the firm - or take a sabbatical. As I understand it, the firm is what the technicality focus' on, not the specific counsel, and that would certainly prove that Garbus *get's it*. While I applaud the fact that Garbus wants to fight on the side of right, I am always suspicious that this is simply -yet again- a stepping stone in a law career. Of course, it's natural to be suspicious of lawyers, since they ARE the ones that invariably become the politicos that write BS into law..