Slashdot Mirror
The Confounded Mr. Valenti
On June 6th, MPAA Chairman Jack Valenti finally recorded a deposition to be used by the United States District Court in the case of the DVD CCA vs. 2600. The deposition is available here from Cryptome, and here on 2600's site. Wired has an article about the deposition here, as well. According to the phrase-counters at Wired, Mr. Valenti said "I don't know" 62 times, "I don't recall" 29 times, and "I'm not aware" 16 times. Interesting that Mr. Valenti makes all sorts of statements, but isn't actually aware of what's going on.
I find it terribly ironic that the counsel for Mr. Valenti objected to nearly everything that Mr. Garbus asked.
/. ...yet every time he was questioned about the very law he lobbied for, he was either admonished by his counsel, or simply stated 'I don't recall'. When he did actually answer differently than that, it was saying how circumventing any encryption is illegal according to the DMCA.
Mr. Valenti, for the past year, has made statement after statement through the MPAA as a signatory, or through articles for various news sources. These statements were most certainly in reference to DVD, DVD CCA, DeCSS, piracy, etc.
We know this because, we've ranted and carried on about them here on
Put this in perspective, I'm the happy owner of a Sony DVD deck. I have several films that I purchased before this hubbub started, but since then I've focused on independant stuff because I am in support of Eric Corley, and I am in support of Fair Use.
I also own a Creative Labs Encore kit for my PC. I purchased both players, and I purchase my DVDs just like any other upstanding consumer. Since DeCSS uses real decryption keys (found through reverse engineering if I recall correctly), it's not 'circumventing' CSS anymore than my Sony deck is.
I think the issue here is yes, they're scrambling to keep sales of their (expensive) DVD players from faltering, when there's the prospect of the money going elsewhere on the horizon for open standard hardware playing back a closed standard medium. Is that not monopolistic? Yes, I have a choice of licensed players from Sony, JVC, Toshiba, Panasonic, etc...but does the buck stop with those companies? How much does it cost a company to license CSS decryption for a player?
If he lobbied for DMCA to be signed into law, if he's had experience in the political field for 30 some odd years, and if he can go around speaking before congress...appearing to be an expert, how can they define him as a lay witness?
^^^^ curious
zerodvyd
If you are then there's two issues; One, will customers put up with it? History shows us that people tend to migrate to software w/o annoying copy protect schemes. Two, is it unbreakable? And if it ever runs at all, then it's breakable. It might be difficult, but again history shows us that people will also crack these things. (sometimes before it even hits the shelves!)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Mr. Valenti has never heard of the DVD CCA or even decss (yet he insists it violates the "law"), has never heard of a DVD disc even being decrypted using decss, and doesn't even know who the defendants are or what they do......other than they sell t-shirts with his face on it.
Yet, according to him, the MPAA acts on behalf of the DVD CCA member companies in anti-piracy matters.
Pretty funny, if you ask me.
if anyone is interested theres an even more detailed figure in steve albinis rant here about what the artist actually gets at the end
MR. HERNDSTADT: My name is Raymond R. Brown.
if the guys giving the interview can't even figure out who they are, i doubt the subject will say anything all that interesting.
--
US Code: Title 17, Section 107
Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include -
So basically, it's not like Fair Use is really a law, it's more like a set of guidelines, where precedent means more than any other single factor. However, it seems pretty clear that schools can make copies of entire works, and that reviewers can make partial copies of works for the purpose of pointing out what they're talking about, which is what enables TV shows to pan movies mercilessly.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Kaplan said deposition transcripts and videotapes would be released, possibly in redacted form, 10 business days later.
The exceptions: Eisner, Valenti, and one other person will have their depositions released in three days.
(BTW who's seen the ASCII version?)
Someone with WAAAAAYYYY too much time on their hands once did an ASCII art/curses animated version of Star Wars. Unfortunately, I've lost the URL. Has anyone seen it?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Don't answer anything. Stonewall. Deny knowledge of everything. It sure worked for Bill Gates in the antitrust case.
-jimbo
"Hold me Bob!" "I would if I could man!" -Larry and Bob in VeggieTales
If copyright were done away with, I could take the Slackware distribution, make a bunch of source code changes, compile those changes and sell the resulting binaries while refusing to give anyone my source code changes.
Quite right. However, anyone else would be free to take your binary distribution and make as many copies of it as they chose, and give those away.
They might not get the source, but neither would you make any profit from the binaries. Where do you think Microsoft would be if the hardware vendors (and everyone else) didn't have to pay for Windows licenses?
-- Alastair
Yeah folks, c'mon! Don't you remember that you're allowed to stomp all over people's rights when you're sick? It says so right in the Constitution, that no one can restrict your right to free speach, _unless_ they have a 102 degree fever!
Plus, he wasn't allowed to stop the deposition, he was a prisoner! Sure, Mr. Garbus asks him a number of times in the deposition if he would like to stop, but that was all just a clever trick!
Praise the Force Field! Praise the Laser Project! Slackware Loon #19830573
this is a big joke. I especially love that last paragraph:
Valenti also emphasized that the DMCA will not work as Congress intended unless access to the WHOIS domain name database is maintained. "MPAA's piracy investigators must determine which website is responsible for the illegal material. The WHOIS database is the first step in determining the ultimate Internet piracy."
a) dumb as dirt and
b) playing smart and goofing up his case and
c) really losing his braincells to advancing decrepitude
Tomorrow will be cancelled due to lack of interest
In college I had a class with a girl who was a nude model for the art department. There was also a guy in there from the art department, and they explained that when you're drawing/painting nudes, you are concentrating so much on painting you don't really think about the fact that there's a naked woman in front of you!
---
Really this is a question of legal opinion. Some lawyers apparently do interpret the law in that manner and believe that they have a case, otherwise this whole suit wouldn't be occurring. In this case Mr. Valenti is just saying what his lawyers tell him is the truth. Hopefully the courts will not side with this legal analysis, though.
Worst case you could argue that Mr. Valenti isn't really qualified to answer this question, since he isn't a lawyer, and thus it isn't really perjury. It would be as if you were asked whether a certain lighting level is appropriate for a movie set - you aren't an expert, so you're basically guessing. Although the witness really should say that, rather than taking a guess that happens to coincide with what they would like to be true.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I think what he's saying here is that he doesn't mind if you turn off macrovision on your Apex AD600A and make a few million copies of The Matrix with mere Analog Dolby Surround.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's obvious that Valenti isn't even running the show. Just take a look at this typical snippet: 15 MR. COOPER: Assumes facts not in evidence. 16 Calls for a legal conclusion and lacks foundation. 17 I just don't understand how we can 18 continue to spend the deposition asking the 19 witness increasingly more convoluted legal 20 scenarios. He is not here to testify as a legal 21 expert. 22 BY MR. GARBUS: 23 Q Go ahead, sir. 24 A The answer is, if there's a legal 25 conclusion to be drawn I don't know. [snip] 23 MR. COOPER: Ambiguous. It's compound. He's 24 testified a number of times that he doesn't know 25 what the DVD CCA is. So by importing that into 1 your question is making it compound. I think you 2 make it impossible for the witness to answer the 3 question. 4 THE WITNESS: I can't answer the question. Perhaps Mr Garbus should instead have checked to see if the witness wasn't a very clever robot that repeated exactly what Mr Cooper said ... and said "I don't know" when no input was received from Cooper.
If there were no copyright, big-huge-media-megacorp could take the latest Stephen King novel, publish it themselves, undercutting the price Mr. King's publishing house charges, and not pay one him read cent.
The question left to the reader: does this give more power to:
Stephen King?
big-huge-media-megacorp?
The answer should be obvious. Yes, artists get screwed by big corps. right now, but they have one single thing in their favor. They have the legal right to determine who publishes their work. That is why popular ones can command such high prices.
Take away that right and you take away the only sort of power an artist has.
Do you really think that a large corporation would pay, say, Neal Stephenson, lots of money for a novel if a rival corporation could just copy the result without paying? How much do you think Mr. Stephenson is going to earn in such a world?
The cake is a pie
You are surprised when an industry mouthpiece has nothing to say? Harumphh...
Valenti suggests that if a student wants to cite from a movie, that they use the analog version.
Here is the excerpt:
Q. If a student wants to do a term paper, let's say do a video presentation on the holocaust -- do 20 minutes on the holocaust, and wants to take two or three minutes from a DVD from Schindler's List to put into that holocaust presentation and she has to de-encrypt the DVD to do that, is that illegal?
(lawyer interference deleted)
A. The student could do that by getting an analog version of Schindler's List, because that's not encrypted.
Though Valenti and his lawyer clearly did not want him to express any legal conclusions, this clearly shows that he thinks that the DMCA overides fair use protection. He is clearly indicated that fair use applies to analog works but not to digital works. So the wuestion would be, if a work is never released in analog, is therefore never to be given fair use protection?
Since fair use is a constitutional right, upheld by the Supreme Court, and DMCA is merely a statute, I think we Mr. Valenti's legal conclusion that DMCA is unconstitutional, and should therefore be struck down by the Supreme Court!
Another lesser point is that Valenti is wrong when if he is trying to imply because the analog copy isn't encrypted, that the DMCA doesn't apply to it. Though not encrypted, and not digital, analog video tapes are encoded with MacroVision copy protection. Which I think the DMCA would still apply to, since it is likely added digitally to the tape. But IANAL either.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
I'm all hoping the the mpaa or whoever loses badly.. .this whole thing is BS.. but this guy, Velenti, *does* answer honestly and truthfully.. it seems.
.and he *is* correct.. it is clear in the DMCA that circumventing an effective copy control mechanism (which this can be construed to be) is illegal.
For a great many of his 'i don't know' he is simply being asked for the record whether or not he is aware of certain things.
As for whenever he is asked about something illegal... he re-states over and over again, that 'circumventing the encryption on a DVD is illegal according to DMCA, plain and clearly'.
The thing on trial here is really the DMCA, not the defendant.
As for 'fair use' and all that crap.. I had a thought.
First, 'fair use' does not mean 'absolute right to undertand and use any technical means necessary to make copies in whatever form you want', it simply means that you can't be prosecuted for what is construed as 'fair use' of a copyrighted work.
Copying a DVD digitally, for your own personal use, may be fair use, and having that copy is probably not illegal.
However, according to DMCA, circumventing the encryption *IS* illegal, and posessing the tool to do so is also illegal, even if the end product is not.
You know, what joe average is buying when he gets a dvd is a 'movie'. If you say in a court 'they can always make analog snippets of it in a classroom or whatever'.. they are right. If the 'product' that falls under copyright, as the people percieve it, is simply 'the movie'.
To us geeks, though.. the 'product' under copyright is a collection of bits, that when decrypted a certain way and run through the appropriate codec produces a movie. See the difference?
They are buying a movie.. we are buying bits.
So.. to us, fair use should extend to manipulating bits on the dvd.. I own the physical dvd and all it's bits outright, and I can do *whatever* I want with those bits in the privacy of my own home.
"Our ramparts are being breached on all sides."
Ho, sailors, protect the caviar! Hide the blondes and stow the Porsche! We won't be pillaged by these middle-class digital pirates!
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
It seems Jack Valenti AND Bill Gates need to be treated for brain problems... They both seem to forget important stuff a lot...
Cybie! aka Ralph Bonnell
Given the number and nature of "I don't know's" in this deposition, either malfeasance or misfeasance might be considered. Either he's lying when he says, "I don't know," or he's dreadfully incompetent to hold the job. Someone in his position OUGHT to know the answers to those questions.
His lawyers not allowing him to answer questions of law is a more correct option, as is a simple, "No comment."
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
A steam box is an olde-tyme contraption that's used by artists and carpenters and such-like to bend wood; it gets your board all wet and steamy and then you just bend it however you want, and it dries and sets like that. In the context of Valenti's testimony, however, there's no telling; perhaps it's something that breaks encryption, and when it "dries," it sticks that way? It being a secret should tell you something...
Serious answer follows:
Bad transcript; it should have been "Streambox," which is a search engine for streaming media (audio, video, etc).
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
During his testimony Valenti played a brief clip from the MGM film "Stigmata." "This film was illegally downloaded this week and the film is still in many theaters in the U.S. and has not yet opened anywhere else in the world. But it is available on the Internet for free."
He 'illegally downloaded' the film? Arrest that man!!!
So what if the library or school is running Linux and they play the movie?
Mr. Valenti was on the plane the day Johnson became president! Watch your step kids!
Sure, piracy has always existed. But, piracy is not the issue here! What is the issue is finally getting to see DMCA's stupidity in action. With that in place, YES you are watching a DVD you paid for on equipment you bought, but the mere act of 'circumventing' the encryption is illegal, so they no longer have to pretend it's about piracy. It's about them being able to control the market.
Clue implants aren't going to clear up anything so long as the DMCA is in place. Of course, if circumventing encryption is in itself illegal, then crypto export shouldn't be illegal. I mean, why do we need weak crypto if no one can legally break *any* crypto?
of course, this also makes those "jumble" puzzles illegal as well...
Another damned comic
+++ NO CARRIER
" Interesting that Mr. Valenti makes all sorts of statements, but isn't actually aware of what's going on. "
If he was aware to any appreciatable degree, e.g. maybe to the level of a goldfish they wouldn't be bringing the case.
When did most of these people learn their trade? old business practice, new times...
~ppppppppö
It means that, if the witness only knows about the answer to the question through discussions with his attorney (and not from prior experiences), that he should answer 'yes' or 'no' only, and refrain from giving away any information that was actually discussed between him and his attorney, as they have attorney-client privelege.
And that couldn't be easily coded around?
Tomorrow will be cancelled due to lack of interest
Present German law for example allows citations, under certain circumstances it is even possiible to use the whole work in question as citation.
If the film industry wants to have such a level of control over DVD that not even a citation is possible they clearly try too much.
Ok ok, I screwed up. Would someone moderate my original post DOWN please? Egg on MY face, fer shure.
- Rev.
Cool! I can run a little .pl link sucker through that and add your links to my just-started web directory... thanks!!!
After the Valenti deposition, the MPAA lawyers went before Judge Kaplan to attempt to have the entire deposition sealed from the press. During this hearing, documented here at the cryptome site, Judge Kaplan had some very interesting things to say ...
...
First:
2 THE COURT: That is persuasive only to a point. We
3 are now six weeks away from a trial. If they can't remotely,
4 as you suggest, prove the allegations they have made in this
5 case, embarrassment on the Internet is going to be the least
6 of their problems, because I am going to call this case, one
7 way or another. Obviously, listening to the two of you,
8 somebody is full of baloney. I won't have any hesitation
9 about saying who it is when I see the evidence. So, while I
10 understand this embarrassment notion, I understand both sides
11 are conducting as much of a public relations campaign as a
12 lawsuit, maybe more, but the game all stops next month.
Whew!
And later
24 MS. ABRUTYN: Even if that is the case, there are two
25 possible remedies. The first one is that your Honor could
1 rule the depositions shouldn't go forward in the first place,
2 in which case there would be nothing to have access to, if
3 Mr. Garbus is off on a fishing expedition.
4 THE COURT: I am not accusing him alone.
5 MS. ABRUTYN: Or if both sides are --
6 THE COURT: This is a bass tournament.
I like his sense of humor!
Do you know if there are any set top players out there that ignore the 'fast forward lockout' portions of the DVD encoding?
-- RLJ
Region Coding. Nothing confidential. It is not a part of DeCSS and has nothing to do with encryption. To see how it works and how to bypass it, check out
www.inmatrix.com
www.dvdutils.com
I hope one day everyone will know about the incentive behind region coding and ways to bypass it spread like wildfire - both software players and "real" players.
Brain Kernel Panic: Clue Detected
VCRs are completely diffrent from Internet distribution meathods. This is because people think for themselves on the Internet. Please realize this fact before posting again or you will have to be sent to a re-education camp.
Brain Kernel Message: Clue Destroyed
.------
Not a typewriter
Valenti's testimony is amusing. He sounds like Bill Gates and we all know where that got M$....
But let's see here. He's attacking HDTV in Congress and I wonder if this is really going to be wise. In fact, I think he's actually attacking anything digital as a threat to their bottom line. This is the same tactic they used in the BetaMax fights of the 80's. Jack Valenti lost that one, too.
Lucasfilms Ltd -isn't- part of MPAA. Why the hell is Valenti using TPM as an example?
How I want to see this go to court--and get trashed for the rot that it is. We also need to write more letters.
In space, no one can hear you moo.
Besides, Stigmata was a good film.
Remove the NOSPAM to spam me...
Yah..
That'd be funny if this case had ANYTHING to do with the RIAA vs NAPSTER
How do they know that the film was ripped from a DVD? Couldn't someone have encoded a movie from a vhs tape? Did they clarify this in court? I don't know a lot about what can and cannot be done with a vhs tape and some sort of video capture equipment, so forgive me if this is a stupid question.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Attorney-client privilege. He's just informing him of his right not to compromise that privilege.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Additionally, while fair use is (largely) written into law, it was around for a long time beforehand and exists because of natural rights and the extreme limitations on copyrights. Congress _could_ say that Valenti is right, but the courts would be obliged to overturn that.
Ripping your own mp3s is also fair use - it's invovled in many situations.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
No one would buy them. They would continue using whatever software they are using now, and happily so.
Anyone could do anything with whatever they could get their mits on.
That doesn't sound so bad...
[without copyright law] people are encouraged to keep [the source code] secret. Because there is no copyright law to allow the original owner to put requirements on source code use, they cannot prevent people from burying the code changes in a vault to get a leg up on the competition.
Yes, intellectual property laws encourage creators to share knowledge. That is true. But the commercial enterprises engaged in the creation of intellectual property would eventually be forced out of business or operate on a drastically reduced scale -- perhaps regionally. Whoever made the post about the software industry turning into a Hong Kong flea market was probably right. You could sell your modified, souped up version of Linux, but eventually you'd give up because prices would be pushed too low for you to continue. I admit there is a price to be paid for what I am suggesting. I know that. I'm only suggesting that in the long run, we will be better off concentrating on the production of tangible goods. The real economy depends upon those goods, and not on the production of information as a commodity.
Soon, since everyone wants "SuperDuperBus" support to use the latest hardware, I've got my sourceless software out everywhere. And with those subtle incompatibilities (unexamined, remember, no one else has that source) I've gained effective control over the OS.
Hardware compatibility depends on design standards and interfaces. As long as those aren't kept secret you would be no better off than any of the other million ISV's. Would the standards be governed by professional associations? By government? By ad hoc groups? I don't know, but all of those alternatives are possible. Many of the outcomes you seek can be achieved without intellectual property protection. Not all of them, of course.
Now please go learn a little about the GPL, it's purpose, and copyright law before continuing to spread what is IMHO an extremely dangerous meme.
I'll definitely do that. Thanks for your intelligent comment.
Well.. valenti could also answer 'I assume that Sony has the appropriate license. If they do not have such licenses, then it would be agains the law'
or, simply, 'I am not aware'.
Not quite perjury. All of the questions in deposition were asked in the context of "outside of attorney-client privelege, tell us what you remember about..." The point to be made here is that, apparently, Valenti gets 100% of his information from his legal counsel, so it is therefore priveledged.
Which only goes to prove that the layers really are running this whole show.
Q: What do you have when you have 100 layers up to their necks in shit?
A: Not enough shit!
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
This has nothing, nada, not-a-thing, to do with countering copyright laws. It uses copyright law.
Typical copyrights restrict people from selling or giving away software without paying the original author. Copyleft licenses restrict people from selling or giving away software without providing the source code.
Both place restrictions on the software. Neither contradict each other or even effect each other.
The cake is a pie
This is important reading. Why? Because you are suddenly and brutally shown that the MPAA is totally clueless about technology. Their only concern lies with maintaining a virtual monopoly created by constraining how you can view the media contained in DVDs.
The fact that their entire case lies behind a point of law surrounding whether or not it is "legal" to decrypt something that has been encrypted blantantly shows that their interest lies with articifcial control of a market.
His deposition makes it clear beyond any possible miss-interpretation that the purpose of the encryption is not to prevent copyright infrigment but to control what can be used to view a DVD.
Interestingly, if it is illegal to decrypt encrypted material, then perhaps we should all be suing the government for the actvities of the NSA and other government agencies. Or is that the rules of the game are different if you're the government?
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
Uh... he *might* be lying.
This just might be the stupidest question ever posted on slashdot not involving hot grits or Natalie Portman, but since when does attorney-client privilege protect a lay witness from having to answer questions?
I was under the impression that the confidentiality was one-way - that is, that a lawyer could invoke the privilege when called as a witness to protect information about his client. I don't see how Valenti is exempted from answering questions about information he learned from lawyers about the case unless he was on the plaintiff's legal counsel team (if he's even a lawyer).
What am I missing here?
People are already making 100 page long empty posts, I think the problem is the 500 character wide lines. Of course this could easily be fixed by forcing line breaks at 60 or 80 characters per line.
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
The money made at the box office is only important because it increases rental and video sales (which is where most of the money is made in the industry, so I've heard).
At least they weren't saying "The Marconi" or "The Ameche." (whoever knows what the latter is, and where that name come from gets a no-prize ;)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
More specifically, can a for profit alternative school, show movies to an assembled mass of people for free, just by saying its "educational"?
I don't think so. I remember that the child care industry got hit up for royalties over this very subject.
It is clear that he wasn't thinking about all those people that making educational films, I'm sure they want to be paid.
The sooner that things like the RIAA die off the sooner you will find local bands getting success because they are actually good musicians, and not getting success because they have a manager that knows someone.
I am afraid it's always going to be about who you know. I got a copy of SuSE to learn linux simply because my friend Alex uses it and he's very experienced and happy to give me a hand when I'm stuck. And imagine if Linus T. was my next door neighbour...
I think CormacJ makes a good point about the problems with closed source knowledge, but people will always use their contacts and communicate to get things moving.
What we've got to do in the open source community is create a culture where even when money starts flowing dependent on knowledge, people still want to share that knowledge. Going to be interesting as linux moves (probably very soon) into being big commercial value to a lot of people...like people have said on slashdot before, there's goingto be a lot of pressure to pervert the spirit of GNU licences / open source terminology etc...
The fix is for the movie execs to develop technology which will protect their copywritten material.
... that's the "hacker incubation" time. It's when you spend all day and all night studying machine language specifications, attempting to comment disassembly listings, and working on solving the challenging puzzle that copy protection is.
No, this is not a fix. It can never be a fix. Copy protection does not work as a long term strategy. It can not work.
The reason is extremely basic and fundamental. The problem is that a protection-stripped product (the "warez" version) is intrinsically more valuable then the original, copy protected product, because you can do more with it. Specifically, you can do the very things that the copy protection tries to keep you from doing, whether it is backing it up, as in the Apple II days, or, as in the case of DVD, extracting and manipulating the raw program content.
As any copy protected technology becomes more and more interesting; as more and more material becomes available in that format, the interest in breaking that copy protection will also rise.
The average age of a successful copy-protection cracker appears to be about 16-18 years old. That's the age when you have enough free time, and enough focus to really dig deep into the details of a copy protection system
Cracking copy protection usually does not require sophisticated tools. It does not require advanced training. Mostly, it requires extreme dedication, hard work, and a young mind flexible enough to figure it out. Criminalizing the art of defeating copy protection is nothing more then criminalizing our next generation of computer scientists. We can do it, but wow, what a stupid thing to do.
In other words, you can't regulate 16 year olds. You can't even get them to clean their rooms.
Unfortunately, we have a Congress that was elected on the issues of gun control, the death sentence, and partial birth abortion, so it's not surprising that they understand so little about the Constitution that they would tamper with Copyright the way they have -- by banning reverse engineering, in the apparent hopes that this will "dumb down" the population, at the "small" cost of criminalizing our brightest young people for satisfying their curiosity about their most valued possessions -- their music and video collections.
The real "solution" to copyright infringement is to remove the incentives to infringe. Pay close attention to your pricing, make sure that you are offering a total package that contains more value then just a copy on recordable media. If you're a music publisher, that means including nice artwork, with printed lyrics and liner notes. If you're selling a computer program, that means including good printed documentation. If you're selling a DVD, that means having interesting "extras" on the DVD that people will want to buy, as opposed to just selling the movie itself, which can be decrypted with DeCSS and copied as an MPEG stream.
In short, provide value for your customers money. The same thing that producers have had to do since the beginning of time -- or until our Congress created special laws to relieve the entertainment industry of this "burden".
Copy protection is an illusion. Every copy protection for every interesting product will be broken, given time. If you've based your business model on the illusion that copy protection will allow you to control your customers, then your business will fail. The entertainment industry does not need to base their business model on copy protection, but if they continue to do so, then they will fail as a business.
They will not win. The 16 year olds will win.
Mark my words.
Have any of you jokers actually read that tag?
:P
I just bought a new chair, and the tags were on the cushion. It stated that the label is not to be removed under penalty of law by anyone OTHER THAN the consumer. In other words, if the tag is in place, it is guaranteed brand new.
That's what you get when you let stand up comedians raise your kids
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
From the library of congress copyright office:
"Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered "fair," such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research."
Fair use is not a right, but a defense to someone claiming infringed copyright. Fair use is decided by the judge by considering:
"1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commer-cial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work."
Basically, the copyright holder retains certian exclusive rights through the copyright's duration; that of public performance, distribution, blah, blah. If the judge feels you've infringed on those rights, you're guilty. However, if your work does not infringe on those rights, your fair use defense may succeed.
http://www.loc.gov/copyright/fls/fl102.pdf
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
You've got a fair point. The guy just may (likely) have not been able to hold it together under the conditions, which were pretty adversarial.
That said, though, take a good look at his record. For years he has consistently spoken against copying of any sort so stridently as to come across like a militant psychopath. The guy is pretty damned hardcore. THAT behaviour has (justly) earned him some serious disgust. Attacking him for that behaviour is quite justified.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
8 is at times difficult to tell whether Mr. Garbus
9 has finished his question. So if you'll pause for
10 a moment it will give ne an opportunity to
11 interject objections.
Calls for a legal conclusion
It's an incomplete hypothetical.
Compound.
Assume facts not in evidence.
Lacks foundation.
Asked and answered.
Unintelligible.
Calls for speculation.
Ambiguous.
Lacks foundation.
more...?
People do not bother trying to circumnavigate restrictions so long as they do not feel restricted. Right now, there's nothing you can do with a DVD except to play it. DVD players have no digital outputs, and the contents of the disc are encrypted.
... yet. DeCSS represents a very basic tool -- the interface between editing software and commercial content. Whether artists have legal access to that interface is an issue that will change the face of audiovisual art forever, for better or worse.
Most people could care less, because they only see the DVD in terms of a glorified "digital" videocassette, with a few cute add-ons.
We have no idea what people might want to do with the contents of a DVD, because people don't have access to the raw contents of a DVD. There is the potential for entire new art forms -- just like sampling technology ushered in an entire new form of music -- one that was unimagined before digital technology -- or only practiced by a few individuals with extraordinary resources, such as the Beatles with Revolution 9.
Hypothetically, given complete access to the raw digital data on her DVD collection, and video editing software, a person could sample bits and pieces of different movies, combine them with a soundtrack made by sampling different movies and songs, and create expressive new works of art. Even if those works could not be commercially exploited due to copyright restrictions, that wouldn't matter. A person who developed a talent that way could then go on to create similar works using their own sources, or licensed sources as raw material, thus creating works that could be commercially exploited, and at the same time creating an entire new market for stock footage.
Until it is established that one has a fair use right to get at the raw contents of copyrighted works that you have purchased, most people will not even consider the potential possibilities of such access.
In short, there is an entire world of possibilities for new forms of artistic expression that are sitting dormant, because the MPAA is struggling to ensure, through technological and legal means, that the only experience people can bring to their products are to sit on the couch, eat popcorn, and turn off their brain for two hours.
Back to the sampling analogy, sampling doesn't affect most people only in the sense that most people aren't DJs. However, given the popularity of house, hiphop, and other forms consisting largely of samples, a large percentage of the population are affected by and benefit from the talents of the small percentage of the population who exploit sampling technology to create new works, and a similar potential exists for audiovisual works as well. The technology is just emerging that will make this possible, DeCSS is a big part of it, and the MPAA is determined to stop it.
So I would agree that most people aren't affected by this
That's the real stakes behind DeCSS.
People seem to have this wierd-ass niave view that if you could legally publish the source code to Microsoft Excel, that all you'd have to do is go up to Redmond and ask Bill Gates for it. Sorry. Just because you have the legal right to something if you come upon it doesn't mean you'll ever come upon it.
Discarding copyright law would kill free software. Why? Because no author of free software would be able to prevent others from closing the source back up.
The cake is a pie
What is the 'fast forward lockout' you experience?
I bought the cheapest $160 DVD player they sell at Circuit City, and it has a skip-track button on the remote control. I hit the skip-track button and it snaps forward past the commercial.
Geez, I must have missed out on some 'features' when I purchased the cheapest set-top player I could find.
Yes, I've viewed the 'Sixth Sense' Disc being discussed here. (borrowed that one from a friend)
THE WITNESS: The answer is, any time that you circumvent an encryption for whatever reason you are breaking the law.
That's his view of fair use. And also the view of the laws he has helped craft. Maybe it's just me, but this willful disregard for our court system gives me absolutely no reason to respect this guys laws. He is lying in court. Is it even possible for very powerful people to be honest in court? (Clinton, Gates, Valenti, etc..) I guess if they were, they wouldn't end up quite so powerful, so there ya go.
--
+&x
Valenti noted that "currently our films are protected by two factors - the amount of time needed to download a full-length motion picture and the lack of unprotected digital copies of our works. But, with the increased availability of broadband Internet access you can bring down a full-length motion picture in less than 15 minutes versus the four to five hours for non-broadband."
25 MR. COOPER: Could I ask, Mr. Valenti m,that
1 you slow down. I'm not sure what counsel means by
2 third paragraph, last paragraph. I believe he's
3 referring to the, when saying that, the first
4 paragraph on page two. I think that's what he
5 meant by the third paragraph.
6 MR. GARBUS: It's called third, yes.
7 MR. COOPER: It's ambiguous.
8 MR. GARBUS: Mr. Valentin and I understood.
9 MR. COOPER: Well, you two may have
Or did his statments about decrypting a DVD make it seem like your not even allowed to play one? Afterall, your DVD player needs to decrypt the movie in order to put it out to your screen....
They're providing the defense.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
The obvious response to this is, that if it wasn't for the "fascist" existing copyright laws, we wouldn't need copyleft.
I just wanted to add that Asian counterfeiting of DVDs is a red herring in this case. DVDs are counterfeited not by decoding the DVD with a program like DeCSS, but by making a bit-for-bit copy of the entire disc, leaving the encryption intact.
If they were to use DeCSS, they would lose the alternate soundtracks, the menu features, the hidden features -- all of the features that differentiate a DVD from a videocassette.
In short, it would be much more work to use DeCSS to decode the disc, and would lead to an inferior product. Why would media bootleggers be interested in something like that when they can much more easily produce perfectly working counterfeits with a bit-for-bit copy, which they are doing in enormous numbers right now.
VCDs aren't an issue either, because VCDs are generally produced from analog sources -- a camcorder in a theatre, or a screener cassette.
Implying that DeCSS facilitates commercial bootlegging operations is a complete red herring.
They might have to make money based on service & physical products?
sure you could. You could just sell activation keys. you might not make as much, but you could still make some. BTW, I thought the GPL was about "free as in speech", not "free as in beer". You have only established that without copyrgihts you'd always be able to get free beer, which is less than what the GPL and its philosophy demands.
I don't see how your .sig file is possible.. This is a quote from this page:
.sig) is wrong? ;)
http://www.wweek.com/html/letters072199.html
"As of August 1998, 3.4 percent of prison inmates in Oregon had an IQ under 80, and 15.8 percent had severe and persistent mental illness."
Are we to believe that Oregonian inmates are exceptionally intelligent, or that Trivial Pursuit (or just your
But if copyright were done away with, then there'd be nothing to prevent the purchaser from distributing the binaries once he got past whatever contract/liscense was involved. Copyright doesn't just apply to the source. And need I remind you that there's been plenty of free software under BSD style liscenses for years even though it doesn't "prevent others from closing the source back up" (not that I prefer BSD to GPL, but it's there).
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Read a book. There are lots of books in the public domain at this point (from back in the days when copyrighted works would eventually lapse into the public domain, before the closing of the IP common). Check out the Gutenberg Project.
Granted, it's impossible to keep anyone from extending these books in such a way that they fall under copyright (e.g. films based on the works of Shakespeare), but I don't feel too threatened by that.
For the rest of us.... Could someone explain fair use?
I'm not here to defend the MPAA or the DMCA, and certainly not the creator of the MPAA ratings -- I hate them all as much as the next slashdotter -- but I am highly disappointed with the way most of the posters to this thread have been treating Mr. Valenti.
At the time of this deposition he was 79 years old and claimed to have a 102 degree fever. I've been that sick before and I don't think I would have stood up to a full deposition. If you think being grilled by a hostile lawyer when you're that sick, you've never been that sick. Give it a rest -- he's an old man, he's sick, he may even be dying -- if you can't give him any respect for living that long and still being active and productive, then I can't give your views any respect, and no one else will either.
On the other hand, I have to admit that it was an excellent tactic by Mr. Valenti's lawyers. I think Mr. Garbus got sucker-punched; he got a mostly worthless deposition, and whenever he goes to use it to try and discredit Mr. Valenti he's going to get laughed at in court. <sigh>
Are you moderating this down because you disagree with it, or because it doesn't add any value to the discussion?Are you moderating this down because you disagree with it,
We call it art because we have names for the things we understand.
While you might like the idea of dispossesing software authors of the fruits of their labour, your claim is bogus. Without copyright, authors could use draconian methods to restrict access to software. This would put you in a position where a lot of people would just pay up because the security measures, while maybe imperfect would be at least difficult to circumvent. Hell, they could even profit off binary derivatives of GPL'd works.
BTW, it's not true that the only viable software model would require "freedom as in speech", you would at best get "freedom as in beer". I know that the freeloading scumbags really only care about the latter, but the GPL is about the former.
The MPAA filed a lawsuit.
Jack Valenti did not file a lawsuit.
Why depose Jack Valenti?
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
Yes, but this is only part of a more fundamental Corporate Truth:
IF YOU DO ANYTHING AND WE DON'T GET MONEY AS A RESULT OF IT, IT'S ILLEGAL!
"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman
--locust
Has anyone asked the most obvious question?
Does he think that it is illeagal for this knowlage to exist? I think the question here is much deeper than freedom of speech. The question really seems to be freedom of thought. Is it legal for there to be human knowlage which enables one to crack a DVD?
What is wrong with lossless transmission? How is that a danger to the public and to the MPAA? This is a changing world Jack and just because you used loss of quality as an excuse to allow VCR's to take off, doesn't mean it holds any relevance today.
What was, no longer is. Deal with it.
Remove the NOSPAM to spam me...
Dongles. CD Keys. Horrible authentication schemes over TCP/IP. More horrible things than you can imagine.
The cake is a pie
THIS IS THE FBI. STAY WHERE YOU ARE. WE ARE SENDING A SQUAD TO APPREHEND YOU.
"Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted.
PLEASE DON'T USE SO MANY CAPS. USING CAPS IS LIKE YELLING!"
I guess Slashdot doesn't know what being facetious is.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Valenti is the Chairman of the MPAA.
The facts expressed here belong to all, the opinions to me. The distinction between fact and opinion is yours to decide.
You're assuming I'm not using a copy-protection scheme...
The cake is a pie
MR. GARBUS: Mr. Cooper, with respect to a
2 document you've given us of October 28, 199, let
3 me just tell you we're missing page three. So if
4 you could make that available to us.
5 MR. COOPER: I'll need more information than
6 you've just given me.
7 MR. GARBUS: Exhibit 23 is the statement by
8 Jack Valenti. It's between your marked pages 8386
9 and 87. There's a page missing.
10 BY MR. GARBUS:
11
12 Confidential
Followed by six (SIX) pages of confidential. All over one page?
Google is your friend
"asciimation star wars"
--
+&x
Sorry -- the statement about there being a finite number of combinations of symbols is obviously false. Please disregard it. Since there is a large number of symbol types, and many tokens of a given symbol type can be repeated in any pattern, the number of combinations would probably be, at least for practical purposes, infinite.
But otherwise my post is the paragon of Slashdot virtue. :-)
Do you remember the balkanized Unix industry of not so long ago?
...that inadvertently saved the net's collective ass when Internet Worm II was launched? As somebody (I want to say Steve Bellovin but I'm not sure) pointed out in the aftermath, the reason that damage was as easily contained as it was was mostly due to the "biodiversity" of hosts running different OSes. More kernels are not necessarily worse.
spawn_of_yog_sothoth
This is not a trivial task. The seller could still make quite a lot of money. Who'd support the sleazy warez version ? A bunch of teeny warez punks ? Do you think that the big corps would go for the real thing or the cheap warez version ? And do you think the home users would use what they use at work, or would they go poking around for the warez version ?
Without copyrights, it would be possible to profiteer from binary-only derivatives of GPL'd work. The question is not "if", it's only "how much".
14 Q Do you know who Mr. Schumann is?
15 A Schumann?
16 Q Yeah.
17 A What's his first name?
18 Q Robert?
19 A Great composer. I love his music.
20 Q Not this man's. He's an expert witness
21 who has been retained by the MPAA and Proskauer.
22 Do you know him at all?
Ask me if I've been required to disclose any crypto keys.
The GPL protects our freedom to share source code and it tries to ensure that our efforts in writing free software won't be exploited for commercial gain. If there can be no commercial gain from re-selling the voluntary contributions of time that go into making Free Software, as would be the case if copyright law were abolished, then at least part of the GPL's job is done. However, it may be the case that many fewer people contribute because they cannot be *guaranteed* protection from commercialization of their work. Be that as it may, there is enough material in circulation now that if nothing new were written for 50 years we'd probably still have lots to draw upon.
Damn, I almost forgot how many billions less they made this year!
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
-Elendale (wishes he had mod points...)
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
I run an online movie review site and include multimedia clips, only once in two years has a representative of some studio wrote me to remove a film review.
Granted most b-movie distributors are delighted to have the free advertisement, even if it is negative, but I was prepared for someone to complain. While deciding how to start the site I watched television reviews, especially Siskell and Ebert, to see how long the video clips were. In addition, before a review was ever posted, I put up a page about the Fair Use Law.
Armed with that I sent the studio rep a reply, pointing him to my Fair Use Law page. It has been over a year, either they're a bit behind on email or dealing with anyone of an informed nature scares them. Plus it is hosted off a Linux box in a friend's house, hanging off a DSL line, which prevents a nervous webhost from ditching me at first sign of trouble.
Final thoughts...why does going to the movies cost $8.50 these days? The modern league of actors and directors came about due to, among other reasons, producers wanting "professionals." With someone like that box office returns are guarenteed right? Unfortunately "Batman and Robin" and "The Avengers" pretty well disprove that idea. Let me pay $3.00 to watch the efforts of some New Zealand kid (filmed over a period of 4 years on 16mm) and my chances of being entertained are pretty darn good.
Andrew Borntreger
Andrew Borntreger
Champion of cinematic disasters
An accurate answer. Not a complete answer or a useful answer, but certainly accurate.
Curiously he was considerably more informed about what Linux is than either of the other people present. He actually knew what it was. I wonder if the lawyers thought they understood the question about using DeCSS to produce an Operating System for Linux toi play DVD's (slightly garbled question page 21, line 9)
Schumann glossed over the exact same point by claiming that DeCSS had nothing to do with region coding, which was disingenuous to say the least. I don't understand why Garbus didn't push him on the point. It's a very important point.
These depositions are only for finding out what the witnesses know or think they know. Expect points to be pushed and pushed hard once the actual trial begins.
The apostrophe in "wasn't" goes after the 'n' and before the 't'.
This may be a case of oh felix culpa!. I'm not sure from your post if you are happy or sad about the existence of copyleft. Not that you have to be one or the other, of course...
Because Jack Valenti is the president of the MPAA and has made many public comments on this issues of this case.
A well-crafted lie appears unquestionable - Dama Mahaleo
It seems that people breaking DVD encryption is the least of their worries.
That said, I think it's time I changed my
He (Clinton, the President) has special protection being Leader of the Armed Forces and whatnot. Otherwise every Republican would depose him regarding every civil case, just so he'd never get anything done, thus ensuring that a Republican would be voted in 4 years later.
As well, it just so happens this isn't just any suit. It is his company that decided to file it. This is not some left field reach for Garbus to depose this particular person.
every man and every woman is a star
"I'm not a senile old man, but I play one on the witness stand."
Reminds me a lot of Reagan during the Iran-Contra controversy, except that Reagan had moved from Hollywood to Washington rather than the other way around. Of course, Reagan later grew into the role...
Isn't it funny.. that when it comes to the masses and technology, those who use technology in it's purest form are the ones who are prosecuted?
Maybe this guy is suffering some kind of mental illness?
--
Or maybe he just wants to get some publicity?
On the other hand, what's the difference?
Seriously, somebody tell mr. Valentis relatives to get the man some treatment.
23 A What do you want me to look at?
24 Q Second paragraph. "Valenti told the
25 committee," second sentence. "The thousandth copy
123
1 of a digitized movie is as pure as the original."
2 Have you ever seen the thousandth copy
3 of a digitized movie?
4 A No.
ROTFL! He really couldn't answer any questions. Why bother showing up? He could have just scrawled on a piece of paper with a crayon, "sum guyz are steeling mooves and stuf. that sux, brek dere neecaps!"
Finally, about a third of the way through he was actually able to answer some questions about the PLAINTIFFS.
BTW, can we have the "pre" tag made as acceptable HTML so these quotes are more legible?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
((Hey Maroon! They're scarfing down movies and popular songs in MP3 format. You didn't get it at all, did you? Go back to handing out your greasy leaflets downtown. It's safer.)) As with playing a clip in a deposition that has nothing to do with DeCSS or DVD's, this also is an 'inoperative' statement. The distinction must be made between DISTRIBUTING the content, for which I dont' care at all if they send out their minions to shutdown and the right to determination (ie, the playing) of items purchased for your use. As for the analogy of 'making a key for everyones house and distributing it', it wasn't that long ago there were only a limited 'n' key/lock combinations for cars. YOU, if you're not that young, probably were walking around with a key that'd unlock tens of thousands of cars. THAT wasn't illegal, in fact they gave it to you. It's ONLY illegal if you use the key to steal the car...and in the 'old' days, you probably would have found a few within your own block.
I don't understand why Garbus didn't push him on the point. It's a very important point.
Hopefully so that he can bring it up at the trial and have them thrown in jail for perjury.
You're wrong, becuase copyright allows the GPL to be _enforcable_ without copyright, noone has to distribute any modified code, because the original author no longer has the right to demand that modified code be distributed.
Damnit, it is just a quote. From trivial pursuit.
I'm not saying it's true. I'm not saying I've researched it. I'm saying that there is a Trivial Pursuit card that has a question that asks, "What percentage of the population has an IQ under 80" and the answer they gave was 50%.
And besides, if you did know anything about IQ tests/scores than you would know that there are a few different types, and perhaps one of those could have the median of 80.
nerdfarm.org
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
but because there is not copyright, you could reverse engineer it, remove the piracy cruft and release the good source. The market then picks the implementation they prefer.
--
+&x
Um, guys, if I filed a lawsuit, I would expect to need to take part in depositions. Course, I'm just one of them evil reverse-engineering-supporting hackers...
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
Q Now, what does 2600 do?
A Well, one thing they do is make T-shirts with my picture on it.
All critics will be silenced..
BilldaCat
As it happens of course, fair use exists externally to the law; it took Congress over a hundred years IIRC to formally put it in place after it had been introduced in the courts. (as the result of the many limitations on copyrights and inherent freedoms)
It's unconstitutional for Fair Use to be limited by generic laws, no matter what Congress or their corporate puppet masters would like.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Alright, if copyright and IP ownership is so useless, why did anyone care about Voices from the Hellmouth?
If copyrights vanish, I will take down my website. Why should my 3 hours with Paint Shop Pro be donated to your 3 minutes of making your website background? Please note: I'm not referring to the site linked to at the top of this post.
So you see, the main point of copyright is to allow free speech (for the rights holder) but not free stealing.
-- LoonXTall
~~~LXT~~~
Life is like a computer program: anything that can't happen, will.
To the people over at 2600 and everyone else fighting these kind of legal battles, thank you. Thank you, for fighting for freedom.
What do you mean 'Linux in a nut shell', it don't fit.
Besides what Wah pointed out, you'll also find such methods don't qualify as "viable".
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
You know human beings don't have any dignity!
Oh, and my grandfather fought the Japanese in the 40's and then went on to become quite the computer programmer. Of course he also protested Viet Nam along with the boomers even though they were his kids' generation. Guess he's always been young for his age.
Maybe he ought to be on the supreme court.
Ever get the impression that your life would make a good sitcom?
Ever follow this to its logical conclusion: that your life is a sitcom?
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
at last, a comment on the whole piracy issue that makes SENSE. spiffy liner notes/lyrics/etc. are exactly why i buy a cd instead of just pulling the mp3s from gnutella (well...cd's DO sound much better [and vinyl even more so], but i don't have the cash to buy any music that suits my fancy). mail a copy of this to jack valenti!
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
These guys are way too late as far as the whole dvd thing goes. There is easily available software to decrypt, play , convert, save, de-macrovision, and any other thing you could possibly do to a dvd. (without getting weird.)
Advd fits nocely, with error correction, on a backup tape. Re-load it to hard drive and it plays much better with the 'encryptation' removed. Oh, and removing the macrovision before you save it makes it have _much_ Better video quality. Macrovision really makes the picture dark. Watch 'The Matrix' with and without and you'll see what I mean.
The DCMA is a BAD LAW and will have to be repealed, with either the existing congress, or the one we elect next!
GET OUT THE GEEK VOTE!!!
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Who'd support the sleazy warez version ?
Umm, you are aware of the general feeling for how to make money on GPLed software right? As a service. You pay for support, not the right to use the bits. And what is this warez you are talking about? In the absence of copyright there would be no such thing. You would be calling them "programs" or some such.
The corps (like they do now) would pay for the service contracts. They could hire teeny warez punks to do it, but they would probably see a nice shiny businessman when they signed on the dotted line.
This sub-thread is about the GPL relyin' on copyright to be effective. The GPL only exists because of copyright, without the stimulus there would be no response.
Note: I'm just explaining what I see. Personally I think copyright has a place*. Stallman didn't think so, so he made a copyleft which uses the rules of copyright to cancel itself out.
*a whole 'nother discussion.
--
+&x
Technically we haven't established anything. We're not proving factual claims, we're arguing about what OUGHT to be done. We can argue about utility and morality and aesthetics and whatever else befits a discussion about the Good Life, but we aren't really proving or disproving things. QED :-)
Nevertheless, I can see your point about "Free Beer". A suggestion that copyright be abolished could certainly be seen as promoting freedom of beer rather than freedom of speech. But this is a question of individual perception, and not implicit in the proposal. Some people will see a park as a place to get a suntan, others will see it as a noble statement of common civic purpose. One cannot force people to regard freedom in one particular way. Freeloaders may not understand that Free Software was created by and still requires a huge contribution of volunteer effort but their ignorance doesn't make the noble purpose any less noble.
You can illegally download it, just not make anything that /lets/ people illegally download. That's the game now, right? Isn't that what MPAA is after?
It's the responsibility of the person making the tool. Unless it's guns or cars of course, because the republicans make so damned much money off them. Can't make soft money off free software.
Ever get the impression that your life would make a good sitcom?
Ever follow this to its logical conclusion: that your life is a sitcom?
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
And of course those other versions cost more because they have to be made special for whatever region/language in the area (which probably is all of about one or two bytes of code somewhere preventing viewing these region encoded disks.
I can see where this is an issue of not wanting to put 100 different languages/translations on one disk, which wouldn't be realistic (unless you want 3 or 4 DVD with only 1 DVD having the language/translation you want).
Eric B
ebresie@gmail.com
They probably laugh their arses off inside.
Actually now that you've mentioned this I'm considering a new career direction. I never thought of being a court stenographer before but the comedy has to be a great perk.
Ever get the impression that your life would make a good sitcom?
Ever follow this to its logical conclusion: that your life is a sitcom?
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
I realize I'm begging to be flamed, but Valenti did the right thing.
Look at it this way - Although he may be bullheaded about the whole issue here, he's doing better than a lot of other people out there. How many times have you (Admit it, you know you have!) gotten terribly frustrated working with some total idiot that refuses to admit that they didn't know something? Valenti does have some sort of grasp on the issues here, even if he's as technologically savvy as your average fireplug, but he's not claiming to have a full understanding of all of the issues involved. Not by a long shot. Think how much more difficult the fight would be if he kept saying "It does this!" and was consistently wrong. I'd rather have someone in this fight willing to admit they don't understand everything than a blowhard that says "If it doesn't work the way I think it does, then it's wrong." That sort of mentality is murder to deal with.
Of course, maybe I'm just tired of loud idiots in general.
"I'm not even supposed to BE here today!"
Again, fair use exists no matter what the law says (aside from the Constitution - but it can be wrong too e.g. slavery)
The AHRA could have claimed that mp3s are illegal, but it wouldn't matter once it hit courts that, unlike the Congress (in this corporate day and age) respect the Constitution.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
How sad in a strange way. It figures he is an old school Harvard MBA type man. He was all comfortable making tons of money and ruling over his kingdom, and along comes all of these problems. And now things have to change, and he has to think.
It makes it so much easier on him to play dirty and play stupid in these circumstances.
What a great time to be alive.
Only the ones with no business sense get screwed that badly. That happens in every field. It happens to us programmers too, if you "just want to code" and not be bothered with negotiating and grubbing for more money you can easily end up working 80-hour weeks for $20K/year and end up burnt out and unemployable in five years, dead broke because you were always too tired to take care of your money.
True, many musicians are in a lousy bargaining position. This is because they are lousy musicians, and they only become commercially valuable because of expensive marketing. They can sign up and "get screwed" while becoming famous making crappy music, or they can not sign up and go get real jobs.
Even then, if they have any mercenary instincts at all, there are ways to cash in on fame.
If you don't care enough to watch out for your own bottom line, there's sure as hell not going to be anyone else to do it.
Yeah, the current system sucks, but I'm not shedding any tears for the poor starving famous people.
About 10 years ago I bumped into a weird guy named Robert Anton Wilson. Actually I was attending a lecture of his with a friend. Around the same time, actually a little later, about a year later maybe, I bumped into a strange looking magazine about computers, electronica, and culture: Mondo 2000. I was the tender age of 19. Just finding my way in the world. Discovering Buddhism, Philip K. Dick, and all sorts of things which continue to enrich my life. ...
Anyways, I got to thinking about networks and the miniturization of logic. Extrapolating one idea after another. You know, I was like a little sponge back then.
And I wondered, if much of our consumption/ commerce revolves around products that are so totally virtual rather than tangible, intellectual property laws will have to be changed to reflect this evolution.
Me charging you for pie is understandable. I mean if I slice it up, some of it disappears gradually. Leaving LESS for me.
So what does Mondo and Robert Anton Wilson, and Buddhism have to do with any of this? They have been grappling with ideas of simulacra, copies, and whatnot.
Like Ministry might say: CONNECT THE GOD DAMN DOTS!
I did, about ten years ago. And only til Napster has anyone, enmasse that is, pricked up their ears like this intellectual property issue actually needs addressing. It is VERY interesting to me how all these things intertwine: MS v. Netscape; MS v. Linux; RIAA v. Linux; US Gov. v. encryption; society v. hackers; artists v. corporate greed heads;
I guess at this point I am ranting. I'll stop. But I'll appreciate any comments.
every man and every woman is a star
Oooh, video? Can I get a copy of the deposition on a DVD?
This transcript was first put up on the 14th with parts that MPAA has declared confidential. Did anyone read it yesterday and notice anything interesting that is missing from today's version?
I didn't bother to read Valenti's deposition yesterday because I was too busy laughing at the judge's description of this a "bass tournament."
We don't need you or your crap polluting our sensory environment any longer. We'll entertain ourselves thank you very much.
Don't spend another cent on movies, CD's DVD's pay-tv, video rentals, or magazines owned by conglomerates etc etc. These mofo's have dumped enough bs on us to last a century. We don't need to encourage production of entertainment by protecting copyright. We already have far too much entertainment.
Quoting a famous geek, I am not sure who though
"In order to view them (DVDs) we must decrypt them. If we can decrypt them, we can rip them."
They aren't going to be able to put up a huge fight, piracy has always existed, it's now just giving us better quality stolen media than the good ol' analog format.
...and I'm not sure we should trust this Kyle Sagan either.
Wow, didn't he do well? I don't think he managed to contribute anything at all to the case, just a lot of negatives about things he (didn't) know. It's hardly going to look good for the MPAA when their Chairman seems to know zero knowledge of anything to do with the case, not even the defendent's names.
---
Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
I would guess that mothers of large families would be especially good at this, having lots of experience at monitoring conversations (and other incidental noises) without continually parsing them. Meanwhile, the rest of their mind is thinking about what to have for dinner that evening, or off in Fiji somewhere with a Fabio clone and a ripped bodice. They probably remember the entire conversation as something like this:
Q: Arf arf, arfarfarf, woof?
A: Meow?
Counsel: Grrrrrrrrr!
Q: Woof WOOF!
A: Meowrrreow.
Q: Oink Oink Oink?
Counsel: Heeeee-awww! Heee-awwwwww!
A: Could you read back the question please?
I can see the fnords!
All the questions that where asked "could a librarian use a few minutes of a DVD" and stuff like that seem quite easy to answer to me. No she cannot. Now in reality, she would, and no one would throw her in jail for it, but its not legal.
Now what it SHOULD be is that once purchased, a piece of software or hardware and whatever technology inside and on it, is owned by the person who bought it. This is the dream of the free software foundation (free not meaning free of charge but as in "information wants to be free"). So whatever I decide to do with my movie, I should be allowed to do. I bought the rights to do that.
This is of course a utopia and not realisable in reality, but we can dream can we not? I feel that the DeCSS movement (which it could almost be described to be these days) is a form of protest us Swedish call "Civil Olydnad", civil disobedience. Meaning to protest against stupid laws by doing what is right even though it is illegal. Lets hope they can afford the consequences.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
Jack Valenti's interpretation of the law is that anything that circumvents encryption and isn't authorised is illegal.
Reading the DMCA, this is a perfectly reasonable conclusion. Whether it is fair is irrelevent here.
Personally I think that he genuinely believes that the motion picture industry is purely interested in preventing piracy, and wouldn't stoop to underhand methods to prevent people from doing anything legal.
Don't forget that they will each need to bring their own, personal player and display it on their own television - be sure to have them bring that to the gathering as well. Also, be very careful that the guests are watching their own television, and not letting their eyes wander to Joe's 50".
Youc an see with when you see people getting so protective of thier money, to the point of trying to strangle new technology to keep it within thier grasp.
You can see it when these people go infront of the worlds press and are able to make all sorts of statements full of facts and figures off thier head and have an answer to any and all questions.
Put them on the stand where people have a chance to ask questions and delve for the truth behind the facts and figures, and they suddenly develop a bad memory and can't quite figure out where they heard some facts and figures.
Courtney Love's rant in salon.com shows what the artists at the recieving end are really getting from all the protection: next to nothing.
The sooner that things like the RIAA die off the sooner you will find local bands getting success because they are actually good musicians, and not getting success because they have a manager that knows someone.
The same goes for DVD technology. Robert Rodrigeuz was the exception to the rule when a small filmmaker could actually make a film for nothing and get it taken by a studio. Locking up the DVD distribution and technology will allow executives to have control over who gets to pay them money to buy films.
Yes. They are trying to gloss over the fact that programs like DeCSS allow one to watch movies without regard to region coding. This is a non-infringing use of DeCSS -- it allows you to play back DVDs that you have legally purchased in other countries, and, under the doctrine of first sale, you have the legal right to use.
Their "party line", after all, is that the only use of DeCSS is to facilitate illegal copying, and that DeCSS has no non-infringing uses. That's what the entire lawsuit is riding on.
Schumann glossed over the exact same point by claiming that DeCSS had nothing to do with region coding, which was disingenuous to say the least.
I don't understand why Garbus didn't push him on the point. It's a very important point.
Original text in italics, my comments in normal text.
October 28, 1999
(right before halloween)
VALENTI WARNS THE DANGERS OF INTERNET PIRACY BEFORE CONGRESSIONAL SUBCOMMITTEE
All internet piracy must be reviewed by congress before it will be allowed to continue.
Washington, D.C., Thursday, October 28, 1999...On the first anniversary of the enactment of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), Jack Valenti, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), warned about the dangers of Internet piracy that threatens to devastate the future of American movies, the nation's most prized trade asset. "While the Internet has great potential, it can also cause enormous losses and damage to consumers and to intellectual property industries," said Valenti. Testifying before the House Subcommittee on Telecommun-ications, Trade and Consumer Protection of the Commerce Committee, Valenti offered a demonstration of the very real threat of Internet piracy.
"While the internet has great potential, we're going to do our best to stamp it out," said Valenti.
Valenti told the Committee that the digital world is far more dangerous that the analog world. "The 1000th copy of a digitized movie is as pure as the original, whereas in analog each copy is degraded in quality."
What I don't get is why this is perceived to be so much more dangerous. First of all, very few people are actually DeCSSing and storing movies on disk (as opposed to disc.) Those that are are generally paying for the movies in their collection. Disk space is cheap, but it's not that cheap. Second of all, a DVD Burner costs about US$3,000 to US$5,000, and media runs about $40 a PIECE. It's actually CHEAPER to buy the DVD in the store, unless it's part of the Criterion Collection... But I digress.
You can make a VCD copy of a DVD with, I'm willing to bet, relatively little trouble, as long as you're willing to be a film editor and figure out which vob files belong in which order and so on, but that degrades the quality from DVD, so Valenti's statement, while true, is completely irrelevant, besides which, since DVDs have no copy protection, when/if DVD burners and media come down dramatically in price, you'll just be able to copy all the files to the new disc and give it the same volume name, and BAM, you've got a copy of the movie. CSS doesn't prevent that.
Valenti provided the examples of a site advertising VCDs of films such as "Eyes Wide Shut" and "Mickey Blue Eyes" both of which are not yet available in video form. "What is even more remarkable," said Valenti, "is that you can also purchase films that have just begun their theatrical run." He offered the film "Random Hearts," released just three weeks ago, as a prime example of this. "Toy Story II" which has not even been released in theaters is on the Internet.
As I mentioned in a previous comment, this is because people are digitizing screeners. This digital media comes from an analog source. This, obviously, is not even an issue in the current topic of conversation.
During his testimony Valenti played a brief clip from the MGM film "Stigmata." "This film was illegally downloaded this week and the film is still in many theaters in the U.S. and has not yet opened anywhere else in the world. But it is available on the Internet for free."
It would be instructive to know if this was a telesync or a screener. Telesyncs are movies recorded with a videocamera inside a movie theater, usually with some fairly high quality equipment. If there is an inside man, audio may be directly from the board, or it may be from one or two microphones.
Telesyncs are not a danger to the sales of any form of media, as a "VCD" Telesync is dramatically lower quality than a VCD made from a purchased VHS tape.
Valenti also took the Subcommittee to the popular Ebay auction site where just yesterday one could bid on a VCD copy of "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace." "This is not available in any format anywhere in the world legally," observed Valenti. "MPAA works with Ebay and other auction sites to reduce this type of piracy," he added.
This was DEFINITELY a Telesync. In fact, at one time I had downloaded PART of it and watched the pod race scene. I then expressed my opinion of it and deleted it; Obviously, I was only using the clip for review, and therefore my use falls under Fair Use :)
Valenti next addressed downloadable media, which he said, "poses a much greater threat to the creative community." He noted that this is the same type of piracy as the downloading of illegal software or illegal MP3 files, which has pillaged the music industry.
What do you mean, "downloadable media"? A wav file recorded with a sound blaster 16 from a VHS copy of Tombstone is "downloadable media"; So is the image of the tee shirt from 2600 with the caricature of Valenti on it -- A brilliant piece of work, by the way.
Valenti noted that "currently our films are protected by two factors - the amount of time needed to download a full-length motion picture and the lack of unprotected digital copies of our works. But, with the increased availability of broadband Internet access you can bring down a full-length motion picture in less than 15 minutes versus the four to five hours for non-broadband."
Let's take a critical look at this for just a second. If you have basic ADSL, you get 1.544mbits/second, or about 160kbytes/second best case. A full movie is about two VCDs long, or approximately 1.2gigabytes. Converted to kbytes, this is 1258291.2 kbytes in size. That means that with the most commonly available DSL around, you're going to take more than two hours to download a full movie at any reasonable quality.
A DVD movie should be around 4gb. On a basic ADSL connection, this is going to take you 7.2 hours to download, best case. However, sites rarely if ever give you those kind of speeds; You're usually looking at something more like 30kbytes/second, if that. Clearly, saying that you can download a movie in fifteen minutes does not apply to the general public, even those with DSL connections.
Just to continue to rub this in their face, the fastest available ADSL of which I am aware gives you 6mbits/sec download, peak. This should give you approximately 600kbytes/sec download speeds. At that speed, it takes an hour to download 1.2 gigabytes. Even if you have an extremely high speed DSL connection, it takes (in the best case) four times as long as valenti claims to download a feature-length movie.
He also observed that the advent of digital recording devices and high-definition television poses the risk of works "being digitally reproduced without permission in commercially viable forms. Our ramparts are being breached on all sides."
Being digitally reproduced doesn't mean anything. In addition, who decides what's "commercially viable"? People have gotten rich selling things like "elvis sweat", bad cologne in small glass sample vials. Doesn't that mean that anything is commercially viable?
Downloadable media piracy can threaten the foundation of the motion picture industry by allowing a single pirate with a single copy of film to produce thousands of copies in a few hours, which are then distributed to sites all over the world. "Thus with a single keystroke, a pirate can do millions of dollars worth of damage to the potential market for a motion picture, whether or not the pirate makes a nickel from this effort," said Valenti.
This is totally inaccurate. First of all, just because people download a movie doesn't mean they won't buy it. It's one thing to be able to watch The Matrix and follow the story; It's entirely another to see it on DVD in all its high-resolution and AC 5.1 Audio glory. I wouldn't even watch that movie on VHS, let alone on VCD. There's just no bloody point to it.
Now that I've covered the financial side, let's address the technical side - The person who's uploading this data is not making thousands of copies; They're making one copy. That one copy is then copied once again, to a site; People then download it, making further copies. The person who uploaded it has only made two copies, one of which is ostensibly a legal copy, the one for his personal use.
In addition to how quickly Internet piracy can spread, Valenti said equipment for piracy is inexpensive and highly portable. "Pirates do not need to remain in a fixed location but can upload illegal materials anywhere in the world on any computer that is linked to a network," said Valenti.
Actually, I can pirate materials on a computer that isn't linked to any network, if I can get my hands on the media. What I think he's talking about here (It's hard to be sure because he doesn't seem to know what he's talking about) is that you can upload or download any time you're connected to the internet. However, that doesn't really make any difference at all; First of all, I'm not going to download a VCD over an acoustically coupled modem in a phone booth. You'd need an endless supply of quarters (or a fat calling card) and a generator to keep your connection and computer alive long enough to finish the transfer, and you'd get arrested for loitering before you completed.
"Today, piracy of audiovisual products costs us more than $2 billion a year," stated Valenti. Technological measures are essential, but not enough. Education is required, as are strong legal protections. Last year Congress took a major step in protecting intellectual property on the Internet with the passage of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA)."
Piracy of audiovisual products? Someone's been making illegal copies of slide projectors and reel-to-reel decks?
This has long been a point of contention between pirates (and those who are stamped as pirates when in fact they are not) and those who own IP that gets copied.
If you can't afford a software package, for example, you would never purchase it. However, if you can get a copy of it, you will still see it. That doesn't mean that they're losing revenue; They're just continuing to not see revenue. It's not a loss, even if it might be considered theft; It's just a lack of a gain that they would never have experienced in any case.
On the other hand, if you copy a movie instead of buying it when you COULD afford it, then you ARE hurting their revenue stream, which is bad for everyone. People are compelled to make the kinds of movies people pay for. If you don't pay for it, you're not voting, which in a capitalist system can only be done with the dollar (As evidence, examine our government and legal system in general.) You're hurting yourself in the long run.
Valenti also emphasized that the DMCA will not work as Congress intended unless access to the WHOIS domain name database is maintained. "MPAA's piracy investigators must determine which website is responsible for the illegal material. The WHOIS database is the first step in determining the ultimate Internet piracy."
I do whois lookups all the time. What's his problem? Can't find the flag that lets you specify a different server? Personally, I wish someone would have maintained the gopher service.
Valenti pledged to continue working with the consumer electronic and high-tech industries to develop effective technological protections to prevent illegal copying of digitized films.
"Valenti pledged to continue paying consumer electronic and high-tech companies to continue finding ways to f**k consumers out of their rights as purchasers (NOT licensees) of copyrighted material."
Concluding, Valenti offered a final thought, "One of the nation's greatest trade assets is at risk. If you cannot protect what you own, then you own nothing."
When did this article get to be about the right to keep and bear arms?
This is patently not about being able to protect copyright or IP. This is about, well hell, I'm not really sure what it's about. As far as I can tell, the DMCA (and the whole CSS thing) is about taking away my rights as a consumer and customer. It's also a whole passle of lies. If I were a judge and someone spewed this nonsense in my court, I'd hold them in contempt and charge them with perjury, since it's full of nonsense.
I am not for one second arguing that studios do not have the right to protect their intellectual property, but I don't think they have the right to step on my rights in the process. I think we can find some sort of common ground provided that the courts and associated people-of-power don't listen to hand puppets like Jack Valenti.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
--
JADBP
| Reality Avoidance Therapists Homepage |
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
You could start at Google.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I also note for the record that Mr. Valenti is here at considerable personal inconvenience. He is not feeling well this morning and has some kind of bug.
A memory leak, judging by the number of "I don't recalls" etc.
As far as I understand it, the theory is that open-source software is better to have than closed source software. I'll assume that idiots don't buy software in this utopian scenario.
1. you can modify it to suit your needs, or get someone who will.
2. you know what's in it, or hire someone to figure it out, so you don't get anything that's bad for you.
Moreover, these advantages will manifest in market favouritism towards open source projects.
If you were to rip off and close-source and sell a GPL-type product, you wouldn't make much of an impact. These two things would kneecap you if the GPL and the copyright it's based on didn't exist. This is an optimistic take on it, again.
1. Your software would just get distributed all over the place, making it free to anyone who wants it and has a spare half-hour to spend on the web.
2. You would score some distrust and a general lack of use, because people running serious projects would want to customize and ensure security. If anyone did use it, they'd reverse engineer it - and be able to fork over source to whoever was interested.
Data East: "Leaders in Dot Matrix Technology" - Star Wars pinball
Have to wonder what's behind those sections marked "Confidential"..
:(
Looks like about a fourth to a third of the document is marked that way..
BilldaCat
Can't do it, can we?
IANAL. From what I've read of the deposition, the problem is that the questions require Mr. Valenti to draw a legal conclusion, something he cannot do, not being a lawyer. At least, seeing as the objections are 'MR. COOPER: Calls for a legal conclusion.', it is not expected for him to be able to explain with legal authority just what the DMCA contains.
--------
Never call a man a fool. Borrow from him.
Can be found here.
(Probably redundant at this point, given the speed of posting. Oh well:)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Of course they don't know anything - all they'd care is to make sure they cover their behinds in terms of money. People like them derail US progress in ... urr... "Gadgets" - just take a look at what they have in Japan and they put the US to shame. (HDTV isn't even widely available, yet they've had it for quite a long time)
Not at all. You don't have to remove it on reselling it. The tag must be kept in place before sale so the buyer can read the information on it (like "100% new material" or "stuffed with factory-floor sweepings").
I got only a few pages into this, when I realized that I wasn't going to learn anything from Ol' Jack. The reasons were simple:
1) He claimed to have a 102 degree fever (which meant he should have been in bed, & they should have resceduled the deposition for another day), &
2) His lawyer early on scored the point that everything he knows about this case is protected by lawyer-client confidentiality. (Sorta like a Mafia hitman getting his orders from the local priest in the confessional. Only the Mafia never thought of that trick.) As a result, he could only report on discussions & information that did NOT come from his lawyer. And, amazing to relate, the man could not recall exactly what he hadn't heard from his laywer, & thus got away with playing dumb.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
I seem to remember hearing about all kinds of insane lawsuits and claims from about 20-25 years ago about how the VCR was supposed to kill film and how the TV industry and the movie industry were going to be dead by 1990.
Wow, I am *SO SUPRISED* that they've managed to make an insane bundle of money off of the rental industry. A rental industry that where they make how much profit, and one that they hadn't even imagined back then.
I wouldn't be surprised if a few lost out, but overall, the VCR was an incredible boom to the rental and videotape industry. Something that the extra freedom of the VCR was never expected to supply, but it did.
If you want the truth, I suspect that if they were to lose this case, and DMCA, and maybe even copyright. (as it's currently enforced), that they would be creative once again and figure out how to make even more insane bundles of money. And we'd get some more new art forms.
Of course, they see this as risk. And they're scared of being among the minority that can't adapt.
I bet he is better now but I fear that the fever may come back during the stress incured by the suit. ;)
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Yeah, but who can we vote for that would actually make a difference?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
One possible reason for the PRE tag not being available is that then people could make a 100 page long empty post.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
He will make definite statments that he believes that its against the law (and this is all from the court transcript mind you) to use a DVD on an unlicenced player...but....
When asked about librarians using 2 or 3 mins of a film as part of a lecture....he answers...
"The answer is, if there's a legal conclusion to be drawn, I don't know" so....he is perfectly ok drawing his own legal conclusions about unlicenced DVD players, but not about that....interesting.
This seems to me to sound like the argument over Cable content scrambling. I have always been of the opinion that I can do whatever I want with data, once its in my posession. So if they don't want me to descramble, decrypt or whatever, then they shouldn't send me the signal in the first place, should block it outside the home.
Course, thats not convinent. The rule that life isn't always convinent isn't suposed to apply to corperations I guess.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Hey, this /does/ read like a script from Matlock...
------------------
------------------
You may like my a cappella music
quick question...
I run a small website. Occasionally I review movies. Would it be fair under the "Fair Use Guidelines" for me to include small film clips for purposes for review? And if not, why? And if I can include them, shouldn't I have the right to make them? From a digital source? That I have already bought?
--
+&x
Well, you can fast forward through the damn Sixth Sense ads -- you just can't hit Menu and skip the dang things entirely. I end up hitting the "Next Chapter" button a lot to start up Sixth Sense.
First of all, I believe the phrase counts in that Wired came up with to be wildy inaccurate. At least it sure felt like these phrases were uttered more often than that.
Plus, I had this image of the plaintiff lawyer sitting at the table using a series of recorded objections (sort like Brian Wilson playing back comments on his tape recorders). Jeez! Every single question was objected to with something inane like: ``Ambiguous'', ``Lacks foundation'', ``Assumes facts not in evidence'', or, when in doubt, combine them altogether to say ``It's ambiguous. It's an incomplete hypothetical. Assumes facts not in evidence, and it calls for a legal conclusion''. It's truly sad that this is what passes as the quest for the truth in the American legal system nowadays.
From reading the deposition, it seems (unbelievably) that Jack Valenti had absolutely no idea that there's a legal proceeding underway until he was told so by his laywer. Therefore, he couldn't answer any questions since that would have violated client-lawyer confidentiality. How convenient!
Let's hope this deposition can be used to blow Mr. Valenti's credibility on this subject right out of the water because it sure seemed that he didn't know anything about the subject (even though he testifies as though he's up to speed on this stuff).
--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
14 Q Do you know who Mr. Schumann is?
15 A Schumann?
16 Q Yeah.
17 A What's his first name?
18 Q Robert?
19 A Great composer. I love his music.
20 Q Not this man's. He's an expert witness
21 who has been retained by the MPAA and Proskauer.
He his the head of the MPAA and he doesn't even know the names of his witnesses. What a luser.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Obviously if the purpose of the educational demonstration had to do with the playback of DVD, DVD quality, DVD encryption, etc, then fair use of the DVD movie would be a requirement.
You don't want to blow your whole wad in the depositions.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
Q You have been on television both with respect to your role as MPAA president and in your previous life?
A Yes.
Q Can you just tell us for a moment whatyour previous life consisted of?
LOL So, reincarnation is is being offered into evidence... Any guesses as to who he was in a former life - remember he was on TV during it =)
Wheeeee
Hehe...yup, the airlines would be ticked off! And to think that I made that mistake THREE TIMES in only 2 sentences! I guess spell checkers are not foolproof! ;)
No, no you don't get it. The *effect* of the GPL is that it's not possible to do certain things with it, namely take the source and make it non-free. The reason why this *effect* has been created is to protest and counter copyright protected proprietary software. I suggest you read some of the stuff on the FSF's site, gnu.org.
Sure, it would have been nice if Jack would have dug a hole for the MPAA but is anyone really suprised by his lack of knowledge and selective memory? I am sure that the MPAA lawyers went over in excruciating detail exactly what Jack would remember and what he would forget if in fact he did know of any relevant information. Additionally, this guy is not a techie. This guy probably does not know what reverse-engineering and fair use entail. I am sure that he does not know how valuable this is to development, and I am sure he does not know what the ramifications to the open source community this lawsuit can lead to.
AFAIK, all Jack knows is that DeCSS==decryption==availability==piracy. It is a whole lot harder trying to track down and prosecute pirates, so why not try to illegalize any tools that can be used to commit the crime!? To them this is damage control, to us it is an invasion on our rights to make decisions. If I can decrypt a DVD to watch it on my Linux box then fine, but I can also chose to convert the unencrypted data to VCD format and upload it onto an FTP server. That is like using a hangar to open the door on my car when I lock the keys in it as opposed to using a hangar to open the door on someone else's car to steal it. I am suprised that automotive insurance companys do not lobby to make hangars illegal all together!
I just pray that the defense proves to the judge that there are legit purposes to DeCSS and that it is not practicle to use it for illegal purposes. The DMCA needs to be re-evaluated!
Really, now...
They keep telling the world that there's no need for programmers, etc., that eventually we'll get rid of needing them except for special cases.
Each and every time they attempt it, it makes for somthing that needs us "geeks" even more than before. Wonder why? Couldn't be because their minds don't work in the same way as ours do , now could it? There's just some things that the average person doesn't have the desire or the aptitude for- just like the geeks. Many of those things, we, as a race, have come to rely upon. Some of those things really require us "geeks" to work well- and things wouldn't QUITE go on as normal if some of these things ceased to be.
Telephones.
Mobile Phones.
Television.
Radio.
Yes, even the Internet. What Joe Sixpack thinks the Internet is, well it's irrelavent since businesses use it for other purposes.
It would be weeks or months before business would really pick up as usual if we suffered a loss at any of the above points or numerous other ones. Yes, it would pick back up, but it would suffer during that time.
He (Jack Valenti, President of the MPAA) has stated before a house subcommittee: Valenti told the Committee that the digital world is far more dangerous that the analog world. "The 1000th copy of a digitized movie is as pure as the original, whereas in analog each copy is degraded in quality."
From the Deposition
Page 108 23 Q Do you know if that tech expert had ever 24 made any copies off a computer?
Page 109
5: Q Do you know if he made ten copies? 1000
6: copies?
Then the lawyer for the plaintiff (Jack Valenti's lawyer) then states:
Page 109
7: MR. COOPER: That's absurd.
The MPAA President's own lawyer states that making 1000 copies of a DVD is absurd. Why can't the MPAA realize that?
It's ignorance itself to think you know all the answers. -Miles Comer
It's instructive to see precisely how Mr Valenti views the whole DVD-on-linux situation. For example:
BY MR. GARBUS: Q I'm not taking now about reverse -- Mr. Valenti. I'm not now talking about the actual reverse engineering. Let's assume man A does the reverse engineering. Man B posts it on the internet. Man C then takes that information, and he's a Linux, user, and he uses that information to play a DVD on a Linux operating system and the Linux operating system has no license from the DVD CCA. Is it your view that that's against the law?
A[Mr Valenti] Yes.
His views on fair use are also interesting and far more restrictive than I believe the law to be. Another excerpt:
Q Did you also testify before congress that the Fair Use Exception was not cut out by the DMCA?
A Yes. The concept of Fair Use is intact in the DMCA.
and a little later ...
BY MR. GARBUS: Q What is the concept of Fair Use, as you understand it?
A It means that libraries or schoolteachers can play movies in their classrooms for educational purposes.
I also threw my coffee over the keyboard at this one. Just for educational institutions?
Draw your own conclusions.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Whine, whine... I have to wonder what the stenographers think about this. They have to put up with it every single day.
Of course, it's fairly obvious that this is an issue he's "here to answer on". His competence in addressing the DMCA is directly relevant to this case, and I find it a little surprising that his lawyers are trying to stop it so blatantly. Myself, I would have just tried to dodge the question with a Clinton-like many-words-but-no-content answer.
We all know, that the reason they're so worried is that if he screws up even the tiniest aspect of the DMCA, Garbus will be all over him for it. As well he should.
This reminds me of those Grisham novels where the lawyer takes on a corporation, finds out they are in way over their head, and just rips them to shreds within minutes. Quite enjoyable to watch... =)
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
President Clinton isn't deposed every time the U.S. is involved in a lawsuit.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
I just fininhed reading the ENTIRE depo of mr MPAA... and I am now enlightened. If many of the people in the MPAA and entertainment industry are as illiterate as Mr Valenti, I am not surprised at all by this attack on 2600.com. Makes me wonder if it was all just a dodge (his repeated "I don't know's" or if he really is that far out of the loop. and one real problem I have is the part where the counsel says that he doesn't have to answer questions about the MPAA's positions. He is the fucking head of the MPAA. He of all people is responsible for knowing and speaking on the positions of the MPAA in all matters. What a freakin ID10T.
"Our funds have never taken part in toxic or death spiral convertible financings of any sort" -BayStar's managing partne
"I'm not aware of any discussions I've had."
Suuure.. now did your lawyers tell you to say
that, or are you on some low quality crack?
Probably crack, since you don't seem to be
bright enough to understand problems of IP law,
not to mention free speech.
ICQ#2584116
-- d'arcy poirot
Words marked. You make some good points, but something you did not address was one of my overall statements - that this does not affect most people.
The 16-year old may be interested in this, but the average person does things the easy way. Right now, it is easier to drive to Blockbuster, order the movie online for delivery or watch on pay-per-view. This may change of course with broadband access and related technology, but even in that case, the delivery medium will be such that the average viewer/listener will not bother with trying to circumnavigate restrictions.
Unless devices are made (and legalized) which makes downloading, decrypting and viewing "illegal" versions of various media, this will not be applicable to most persons. An example of a legality being successfully circumnavigated would be the radar detector and the speed limit changes in the mid-1970's.
What Mr. Valenti and his cohorts really need to do is crack down on the distribution of their products by foreign governments. Countries like China do nothing to discourage the copying and distribution of movies, software and music. In fact, they encourage it and benefit from the financial rewards of providing cheap entertainment to their people. I really don't care if you and I pass files back and forth; what sickens me is a despotic, intrinsically evil government like the Chinese benefitting from free countries' products. However, I am even more disgusted by the actions of our government at ignoring the Chinese absence of human rights in favor of getting a few cheap imports.
However, arresting and demonizing 16-year olds in Norway and suing startup companies is far easier to digest for Valenti and his lawyer goons. It is also easier to spin this to the public.
Long long ago in a city far far away, I used to work for BaronData, one of the first makers of personal computer systems for court reporters. We heard some wonderful stories which might actually be true.
One reporter on his first job was so caught up in the proceedings that he forgot to take notes, and didn't realize it until he was asked to read back his notes.
Another was just the opposite. He was so focused on taking notes that when he was asked to read back, he simply wrote down the request and waited for things to continue.
Most of the good ones I talked with said they were very detached from everything. Simply took the notes and didn't think about much at all other than the process of taking the notes. Relax and transcribe, that's the trick.
--
Infuriate left and right
Ok. Enlighten me. Or are you just shooting your mouth off?
I really do hope that you know I was joking.
------
Not a typewriter
I'd like to see Mr. Valenti try to download a feature-length movie of reasonable quality (usually around 800MB from what I've seen) on a 56k modem in less than 48 hours. Where is he coming up with these figures?
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Jack Valenti is old, but more importantly, he states that he has a 102F temperature! He shouldn't even be giving the deposition in such a state. It's ridiculous.
I'm not on his side in this debate, but labeling a sick and feverish man a LUNATIC is just wrong.
--
#19845
12 written by you and others.
13 A What I want to do, counsel, if you will
14 allow me. It's Diane. If you say Diana I don't
15 think that she would like that very much.
This guy is not able to remember technological things directly related to his company's job but he is able to remember that a given woman would not be happy to be cald Diana instead of Diane?
I guess this woman terrorised him more than DVD piracy then.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
He was sick:
THE WITNESS: I'm sorry, because I've got 102 fever and it's affecting my ears. I just did not hear.
MR. COOPER: Could you read it back more loudly?
BY MR. GARBUS: Do you want to take a break from the deposition?
A No. This is fine. I'm going to do the best I can. When I find out I can't go anymore I'll tell you, but right now I want to continue this. I just need -- I didn't understand the question. I'm so sorry.
Wheeeee
the internet cant just go away anymore. in 5 more years that'll be like saying "i dont need my car even though its a 50 mile drive to work". good programmers are hard to find, there certainly are not "plenty" of them. ask any HR person in a tech company what its like to find talent. sure its easy to find clueless hustling "vb" or "asp" programmers that write buggy software and have no concept of security or connectivity. hey! i bet those are the same guys you know that spend their spare time playing golf instead of making themselves better programmers?
Good point there - he's lobbied for these laws, yet accoring to his lawyer, Valenti isn't even competent enough to answer questions about the DMCA!
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
See, I know why he sopke the way he did in the deposition!
Since this was planned beforehand, that "bug" he's got? Remember all the worms and trojans that you've been hearing entirely too much about recently?
Jack Valenti's brain was under a DoS attack at the time of his deposition, limiting his resources and rendering him unable to answer the questions!
"I'm not even supposed to BE here today!"
There is one word that you had better learn the meaning of: disintermediation. Simply put, since this is probably isn't on the short list of things you know, it means cutting out the middleman. In this age of direct contact between parties on the internet, it means getting rid of unnecessary middlemen who don't add value commensurate with their mark up. A significant number of people on both sides of you have already decided that is you.
Let me give you another hint. We're geeks. We can do your job much better than you can do ours. You need us. We don't need you. We may need some of the things you do, but we don't need you to do them. In fact, you've gotten rather arrogant lately. We'll be happy to see you go. Watch that door on the way out. It closes rather quickly.
Could someone write a "Mr. Cooper" filter? His comments and objections are a waste of bits.
Also, what is a steam box? That question generated several pages of "confidential" stuff.
Believe in things of which no person has ever learned
Typical, in any suffiecently clever, fortunate group there will be someone proclaiming that any one with a gripe should shut up since it's their own fault for being stupid and incompatent.
... even if we normalize for "sales per person".
u sicsite.com/ims/corner/albini.html+Steve+A lbini+Baffler&hl=en
The logic is brilliant: "I'm smart and compatent, I don't have problem X, therefore if you have problem X you must be stupid and incompatent, and we all know that the stupid and incompatent deserve whatever they get - QED"
The fact of the matter is: Regardless of buisiness accumen, you are far more likely to make a decent living as an average programmer than you are as an average musician
Large companies take in on the order of 1-2 hundred thousand per person. And the average starting salary for a programmer is around 40-50 grand a year. So even if you don't negotiate a great deal or even if you aren't a kung foo master, you can still afford to live (well the valley is a mess but that's a different rant).
If a band only takes in a few hundred grand in record sales, they are fucked. They are in serious debt and with a typical contract, their career as a band is over - unless the record company has pity on them.
I would bet that there are fewer major label artists who are independently wealthy than there are programmers doing 80 hour weeks for 20K.
As far as major labels go, almost every mucisian is in a lousy barganing position, even if they are brilliant, even if they have a proven track record, even if they sell millions. So maybe Madonna is happy with her label, since she is a great buisiness woman and has made her label a fortune, they probably don't fuck with her. But there are literally a handful of people in that position. It is not uncommon for multi-plaitmun artists to be totally screwed and unable to do anything about it, even with really good lawers.
You really ought to read the steve albini rants, he gets into much more detail:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.indiem
Of course, musicians still have choices. Everyone should do thier reseach before entering into a contract. And any good reserch of major labels would reveal that they are pure evil. And if you are good, you can make a decent middle class living playing gigs and releasing on a fair indie label. Unless you would have 3+ multi-platnum albums w/ a major, indies are your best choice. (although i don't know of many programmers who wind up hundreds of thoudands in debt, just cuz they didn't do thier reseach before getting thier first job)
One more thing, it probably sucks to be super famous without being rich. If you are super famous, it's hard to lead a normal life, people harrass you, people want to touch you, pick a fight with you, block your way to talk with you. You need to spend money on security, you can't just go out and run errands without major hassles. People start expecting stuff from you, assuming that you're rich. If you go outside in cheap clothes or a cheap car or a cheap haircut you get dogged on the cover of the enquierer. Your kids get hassled at public schools. Your privacy is constantly assaulted. You end up spending money just to protect yourself from you fame. It's hard to do that with a middle class income. Granted, you get laied, get gift clothing from designers and don't have to wait for a table in restaraunts, whoo-hoo!
You don't have to shed tears for starving famous people, but realize that they need to go public with their stories so that others can make informed choices about whether to sign on the dotted line.
- bridgette
What the heck does this mean?
"If copyright were done away with, the GPL would be unecessary."
If copyright were done away with, I could take the Slackware distribution, make a bunch of source code changes, compile those changes and sell the resulting binaries while refusing to give anyone my source code changes.
Is that what you mean by "Unnecessary"?
No, what he means is that if copyrights were done properly, you would be doing your time in prison for not following copyright (meaning not shipping source code ie. obstructing improvement of humankind).
My reply was meant to be funny as well. ;)
With the AVI / DivX codec and a DVD as source (not a TV capture or a crappy version filmed from a movie threater screen) you can make very nice-looking versions that fit on a CD-ROM. Try 'divx' on Gnutella (or IRC or whatever other distribution channel) and you'll come up with Galaxy Quest, The Matrix etc. Actually it's high-enough quality for your average computer monitor plus sound card.
/I/'d go for the DVD version, too! Way to much effort ;-)
So you can have a good quality movie at a size (600 MB) which people will download. Then again,
Velenti said he didn't know what the DVD-CCA was, who it was, or what it does. Later, Garbus went into asking if Valenti believed that unlicensed DVD players were against the law. I wonder why Garbus didn't just generalize it to "Do you believe that DVD players are against the law?" (leaving the issue of whether it is licensed or not, out). If Valenti pretends to not know what DVD-CCA is, then that question would have been a pretty sticky one to answer.
I would like to ask Valenti this: "Is a Sony DVD player, for sale as Best Buy, against the law?" Either Valenti would have to say he doesn't know, or he would suddenly have to "remember" what DVD-CCA is.
How convenient that Valenti was sick and had a 102 fever. That will come in handy later, when it is discovered that some of his "I don't know"s are lies.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
This article is slightly incorrect, the MPAA is suing 2600. Not the DVDCCA. This is, in fact, a very important point as the entire legal and technical relationship between the MPAA is quite important to the defense case.
It is worth noting that Mr. Valenti outright perjures (well, okay, if you believe neither Gates nor Clinton committed perjury, I guess Jack didn't either) himself by claiming he has no idea what the DVDCCA is.
I was really enjoying the testimony... 'til I hit the pages and pages of "Confidential" and nearly wore out my page down key...
Wheeeee
That's either the most sane or the most insane thing I've heard all day.
DNA just wants to be free...
Is his total ignorance about things, but his die-hard persistence that he is right.
Q: Did you also testify before congress that the Fair Use Exception was not cut out by the DMCA?
A: Yes. The concept of Fair Use is intact in the DMCA.
Q: Tell he how that is. [sic]
A: Well, I don't know except that the concept is intact.
So he doesn't have any understanding of the law itself, and can't provide information as to the relevant portions of the law. He can't explain how fair use survives under the law, but he absolutely and unequiovacably knows that fair use is intact? Granted, I'm not a lawyer either - but I've read the DMCA myself and could probably explain how fair use *doesn't* survive under the law, and I'm not a party to the case! He sounds like one of those people you meet at a party: "I don't know anything about what you're talking about, but you want to know what I think on the matter?"
I wish I had his diehard infallibility. "I don't know anything, but I know I'm right!"
You should have seen 2600's landmark case where Emmanuel Goldstien removed that "Do Not remove under penalty of law" tag off his mattress.
Making an unlimited number of copies of an audio recording for personal use is covered under the Audio Home Recording Act. The Home Recording Rights Coalition webpage is an excellent place to go for this sort of information.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
After all this questioning and back and forth bickering, why won't they ask the question I really want to hear?
Q: Since bit for bit DVD copiers exist, how exactly does CSS protect anyone's intellectual property?
If I make a bit for bit copy of a DVD, it will play just fine on a legally licensed DVD player, even though the disc itself is illegal. The fact is, the dirty little secret of DVD is that the encryption isn't about Intellectual property, it's about controlling distribution of DVD discs.
CSS is only for controlling access to movies. Back in the VHS days this was done with the American(NTSC) and European(PAL) formats of VHS tapes. Now we get CSS.
They should have taken a note from some crypto experts when thinking about how to control distribution of movies.
"If you think cryptography can solve your problem, you don't understand cryptography, and you don't understand your problem."
--Bruce Schneier
"This is not a company that appears to be bothered by ethical boundaries."
Attorney General Mike Hatch on Microsoft
If I, being the student, am preparing a presentation to be played back from my laptop computer - I need a digital sample of the material. If I get an anolog version of the movie, I have no way to get it into digital format on my laptop (I don't own a video capture card). So that solution would be not only impractical, but impossible for me personally.
Fair use states basically, if I own the digital version of the movie, I am entitled to extract samples for use as stated above.
Mr. Valenti is full of sh!t.
I AM, therefore I THINK!
Couldn't it possibly be argued that CSS is not an effective copy control mechanism, but in fact only a playback control mechanism?
It doesnt seem to me like CSS stops anyone from copying anything and playing it with DVD CCA licensed hard/soft-ware.
If deposed, you will be told not to volunteer information and to just answer the question, not anything more.
But the designee's answers has the power to bind them to those answers.
I would have used that deposition to try to have the injunction disolved.
Fight Spammers!
If the stuff about citing from a DVD, Valenti says that even that would be against the law (with Cooper's disclaimer that Valenti is no legal expert) and Valenti suggests that if a student wants to cite from a movie, that they use the analog version.
I wish I could have asked Valenti some follow up questions to that, to get around the he's-not-a-lawyer objection: "Mr. Valenti, in your opinion, should a student have the right to cite from the DVD?" If he says No, he's a monster with a PR disaster. If he says Yes, then ask, "Would you be in favor of repealing part of DMCA that prevents people from breaking the encryption?"
I'm no lawyer, but I feel like Garbus could have done much better.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I also note for the record that Mr. Valenti is here at considerable personal inconvenience. He is not feeling well this morning and has some kind of bug.
Ah! is this a beta version of Mr. Valenti? Bring on Valenti 2.0! Less crashes! More Lawsuits! Improved Grandstanding!
air and light and time and space
I guess Valenti hasn't seen "The Sixth Sense" DVD, or any Disney DVD's - otherwise he wouldn't say the following - I think that things like this (not even being able to control the playback) might be considered a limit of fair use in some way and really hurt them:
-----------
Q If you have, let's say, advertisements in the beginning, can you fast forward past those advertisements so that you can go straight to the movie?
A I'm not aware of DVDs that have advertisements. What do was mean advertisement?
Q Advertisements for other movies.
A Yeah, you can fast forward through that.
------------
It's one of the "features" of DVD players that makes me the most angry, and really makes me consider building a DVD player box based on something like DeCSS to be able to have full control over navigation.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Can you fast forward on a DVD?
Yeah, I think you can.
Has the man ever watched a DVD in his life?
Q Let's restrict it to the MPAA.
A I can't answer the question.
Q Why not?
A Because I don't know what the answer is.
Q Do you understand the question?
A Huh?
Q Do you understand the question?
A Not really.
This sounds like something right out of Abbott and Costello.
Steve
Notice that the question "Is regional coding encryption?" (on page 30) is followed by about 10 pages marked confidential. Is there something about region encoding that they want to hide from the public?
I think the only response Valenti would have given is "I don't recall"
They could have gotten a parrot to do the same deposition, and it would have cost less.
nerdfarm.org
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Or, as most of us would put it, clueless or a liar?
In Mr. Valenti's L.A. Times opinion piece he quoted some of the web sites offering DeCSS as saying the software would allow piracy. Now, most of us have been to a few DeCSS sites and we know that most of them were very clear in saying that DeCSS did not offer functionality that would enable piracy.
There are two possible explanations for this: Either Mr. Valenti was deliberately trying to deceive the Times readers or someone deliberately deceived him.
It would be very interesting to hear some questioning of this flack on the subject of what did he know and when did he know it. While a deposition would be a great place for that (perjury and oaths and all of that), any reporter or call-in show which allows open questioning of the guy should be just as useful. After all, he is a PR guy who has a message he needs to get out, even if it is a deceptive message.
Somebody had to search through a whole bunch of DeCSS sites to find any that promoted themselves the way Mr. Valenti claimed. I doubt it was Jack himself. What if a reporter interviewing him presented him with a computer with an Internet connection and asked him to show the sites?
I doubt he could find one (Can you say, "I don't know," Mr. Valenti?), so the reporter would have to have a backup plan. A simple possibility: Do a search on Google for "DeCSS piracy." I'm betting most of the hits would say, "Here is DeCSS. The MPAA says it can be used for piracy, but it can't. All it's good for is playing DVDs which you legally own and a have a legal right to play."
It would be interesting to see his response. Another "I didn't know" would suggest he has himself been deceived. And the obvious follow-up question would be who told him the information he put in his article.
Another interesting possibility in all this: We all know how easy it is for any of use to put up a DeCSS mirror. Wouldn't it be just as easy for the Motion Picture Association of America to put up one of their own, claiming to be pirates? If we could catch them in a fraud like that, we might be able to really rock their world.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
It dismays me to see how much confusion there is on the part of the involved parties, and the press. Mr. Garbus asked Mr. Valenti if he had heard of "D-I-V-X" and Mr. Valenti said "no." Now, of course Mr. Valenti had heard of the failed pay-per-view DIVX scheme... but of course Mr. Garbus was probably referring to the new video compression algorithm... but then Wired picks it up and refers back to the failed pay-per-view scheme...
It also pays me to hear "The DeCSS" and "The Broadband" and "The Wireless" and various other tidbits that sound like we're just not quite clear on the concepts.
"If I decrypted the DeCSS on the wireless, how long would it take me to pirate a DIVX?"
(No, not an exact quote, but some questions didn't make any more sense than that...)
---
Every moronic jackass is entitled to his own opinion...
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
Q: Do you feel that artists have a right to own works that they create?
Jack's Mind: profits interefered with...
A: Well of course I do. We just want to receive just compensation for our unparalleled efforts to promote these artists
Q: Do you feel that provisions of the DMCA violate certain freedoms?
JM: profits over freedom, freedom good profit better
A: Absolutely not. We are simply trying to protect the artist's works.
Q: As far as Naptster and Gnutella are concerned, has the RIAA given any thought to embracing these distributed technologies?
JM: ?? distributed huh? bzzzzz ??
A: We are mainly concerned with the potential of abuse that lies in these new technologies from pirates and terrorists and pedophiles.
Q: How do you sleep at night knowing how much you and your associates have abused both artists and the American legal system?
JM: grr ruff! RUFF! BOWOWOWOWOW!
- Rev.A: Well, the tranqualizers help. [Laughs]
There are two possibilities: Valenti is a cagey weasel dodging like Bill Gates, or he is a somewhat befuddled, 80-year old man with a headcold. I wonder which? Has anyone seen this guy on TV recently? Does he seem with it?
I thought it was interesting that right after Garbus brought up region codes there was a huge confidential section.
20 Q Does you know how -- let's use the term
21 Asian pirates -- how they copy DVD?
22 A What kind of pirates?
You know, Asia? That continent with a couple billion people? With the languages that use all those fancy characters?
Man, my head hurts...
For more information, click here.
Whether or not Mr. Valenti or the others wish to admit it, the genie is out of the bottle. Suing 2600 or arresting 16-year old Norwegians is like trying to keep a dog from having puppies by taking them away after they are born.
/. demographics, most people are not going to search and download an online version of a pirated movie. It is far easier and accessible for the regular person to stroll down to Blockbuster and pick it up. (The big problem with this whole issue is not what a handful of Westerners do with that pirated material off the Internet, but what China does with it - big fat lot of good trade agreements do with the Chinese).
The fix is for the movie execs to develop technology which will protect their copywritten material. And although it makes it interesting for some to find their way around it, the reality of the situation is with the exception of perhaps
What's annoying are some of the hypothetical questions being asked of Mr. Valenti. "What if a librarian is doing a report on the Holocaust and uses three minutes of Schindlers' List would that person go to jail?" At any moment, there are probably three people in the universe who fit that description. Get real. Put some real questions to Mr. Valenti such as
"Since DVD is relatively new compared to analog recordings, what percentage of movie sales do they really comprise? And with that in mind, do you have figures to back that 2Billion dollar loss you state? And what is the cost of producing that DVD vs. the overall profit of selling that DVD: when do you break even and start making money? After selling 500 copies or 5million?"
I found the following question most interesting:
... and wants to take two or three minutes from a DVD from Schindler's List to put into that Holocaust presentation and she has to de-encrypt the DVD to do that, is that illegal?" asked 2600 attorney Martin Garbus.
"If a student wants to do a term paper, let's say do a video presentation on the Holocaust
Valenti ducked the question. "The student could do that by getting an analog version of Schindler's List, because that's not encrypted," he said."
One of the arguments defending DeCSS is that pirating movies is currently impractical due to the huge size of the files involved. The MPAA argued (IIRC) that technology will change all that.
Fair enough. They're extrapolating into a possible (likely)future.
I think we can do the same. I'll bet that in the years to come it won't be possible to obtain an analog recording (VHS, Laservision, whatever)
of a movie made, say, 8 years from now.
If it was'nt for fascistic[1] existing copyright laws, COPYLEFT would not have been invented.
[1] They're at least as much fascist that the teenager that copies a CD is a 'pirate'.
Good effort though.
Jack Valenti is the head of the MPAA, Motion Picture Association of America. This case is in regards to DeCSS and the DMCA, not RIAA and Napster.
Remove the NOSPAM to spam me...
I am quoting Rob and Jeff from a Geeks in Space episode...
...and I'm not sure we should trust this Kyle Sagan either.
The downside to this kind of argumentation is that a lot of people are driven by other motivations than the interests of the common good. A lot of people are more interested in themselves than other people. As it is, these people can now contribute to the common good, by doing important work and getting paid for it. In a society without copyright, what could we give them for their work that they would need if they could not protect the rights to their discoveries? Who would pay for something they have the right to see, read, use?
This is what it comes down to, and it is tricky stuff.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
a few times he makes some interesting comments regarding VCD's... now, from my... um, activities, I know that most VCD's aren't created from a DVD but actually from those people that go into preview movies with a video camera and film the entire thing. You know the guys, the same ones that sell the dummied-up VHS tapes on the corner of Times Square in NYC. Sometimes you'll see someone's head infront of the camera, sometimes the camera operator will cough or sneeze, and most of the times the quality is crap.
So my question is, what the hell does this have to do with DVD's and DeCSS and 2600's posting of the DeCSS code?
Yes, there is pirating going on with movies... but most of it doesn't involve DeCSS or DVD encryption.
I'm going to stop here before I start making too many comparissons to Napster and that stupid battle also.
Btw, I'm proud to say that I was downloading the Matrix VCD, all 1.5 gigs of it, they day before it was released in the theatres, from a Hotline server with no ad banners. It's quality was good, even though it didn't have the soundtrack included (you could hear every bullet casing hit the ground)
"If I decrypted the DeCSS on the wireless, how long would it take me to pirate a DIVX?"
You said wireless!
Diddily day.
Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Canard: a false or unfounded repor
If Mr. Valenti, who, due to his position in the industry, is very much involved in copyright and other legal issues, doesn't know if all the copying scenarios Mr. Garbus asked about are legal, then how the heck are we, simple upstanding citizens, supposed to know what's legal?
--
Donate free food here
Forget it. It's probably COBOL code.
One can do that already...
So let me get this straight. somehow someone downloaded a film before it has even been released? Before there was even a chance of it being on DVD and somehow this is relevent?
Come on all this says to me is that they have pirates inside their own organisation. which makes the idea that you would need software to crack DVD encoding even less relevent.
102's not that bad for the average person, for an elderly person, perhaps it could be something of a problem. And I don't think they sucker punched Garbus- the testimony has things that I'm afraid wouldn't be believable unless Valenti was suffering from delerium because of the fever (in which, the deposition would be re-taken). So which is it, was he just really too sick to give the deposition and we need to take it over or is he feeding everyone a line (which would mean he just purjored himself...)?
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
16 Q When you say you're not aware does that
17 mean you don't know?
18 A That's a good synonym.
19 Q Okay. When you said before you don't
20 recall, did that also mean you don't know?
21 Answer: Well, I don't recall when -- meaning, I
22 don't recall. I mean, that's a -- that's a simple
23 declarative English sentence: I don't recall.
---
This is hilarious! The lawyer is trying to make him state that every time he said "I don't recall" he also meant to say "I don't know". I've been to depositions before, and it is a chess match of words and statements. You have to be very sharp! Obviously Mr. Valenti has had MUCH training in this matter!
This