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Civil Disobedience and DeCSS
The EFF has put out a series of Updates covering the case day-by-day as it progresses. The most recent one or two aren't on the website yet, but should be soon.
2600 is keeping a complete archive of case-related documents, including transcripts. The transcripts are serious time-killers - it takes a long time to read 7 hours of testimony. But if you've got some time on your hands, they make good reading. Nothing beats first-generation source materials.
The New York Times has a nice summary in their Cyber Law section. Concentrates on the surprise testimony of Jon Johansen on Thursday, but touches on other issues as well.
The people at Harvard's Openlaw project have been scrutinizing the trial as it unfolds. They've collected a bunch of links to press coverage of the trial, and it's frankly pretty interesting to see the substantial differences between publications - almost as if they were watching different trials, one about the freedom to view DVD's as you choose, and a completely different trial about pirates, freebooters, and buccaneers. Their DVD-discuss mailing list often has insightful commentary.
So now that you've had a chance to read up on the trial, let's cut to the chase: the defendants are going to lose. (Note that the decision in the case may not come for a few weeks yet.) No doubt Monday-morning quarterbacks are already primed for action, and the MPAA's PR people have already prepared their after-action press releases calling 2600 a bunch of pirates, thieves, and baby-stealers. Some people will claim it was due to Judge Kaplan's evident bias (which has now degenerated into the lawyerly equivalent of a flame-war between the defense lead attorney Martin Garbus and the Judge); some will point out that any judge could have interpreted the statute as rigidly as Kaplan, with or without bias. Regardless of who wins, the case will be appealed, so this matter will be finally settled in the Court of Appeals or perhaps even the Supreme Court.
In the meantime, I'm going to take the liberty of reposting an email from John Perry Barlow. I don't think he'll mind.
Dave,
Thanks for the LA Times link. I like best the delicious irony of the following:
"This is a very profound moment historically," Time Warner President Richard Parsons says. "This isn't just about a bunch of kids stealing music. It's about an assault on everything that constitutes the cultural expression of our society. If we fail to protect and preserve our intellectual property system, the culture will atrophy. And corporations won't be the only ones hurt. Artists will have no incentive to create. Worst-case scenario: The country will end up in a sort of cultural Dark Ages."
A profound moment, indeed. Indeed, it is an assault on everything that has stifled the cultural expression of our society. It's an assault on the system that stole every dime The Chambers Brothers ever made while grotesquely enriching Brittany Spears.
There is certainly the potential for a cultural Dark Age here, by which I don't simply mean what would follow the death of Time-Warner. Rather, I refer to the very real possibility that Time-Warner and the rest of its loathsome kind will die with most of the expressive genius of the 20th Century buried with them, embedded in their corpses by their last success: using copyright to prevent the digitization and, hence, perpetuation of all that creation.
Only massive civil disobedience will prevent this ugly future. Speaking as someone who has created a lot of "intellectual property," I can assure you that my primary incentive was the possibility that what passed through my heart would be heard. I want it to be available to my great grandchildren. But they will never hear it unless it's stored in some other medium than the material objects the record industry manufactured, all of which will be as mute as stones by then.
Of course, I wanted to be paid for it, and I was. Just as Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, and countless others were paid, despite the absence of copyright protection.
The only people who are likely to lose the lesser incentive of wealth will be the likes of Richard Parsons. His loss will be our gain. Unless, of course, he wins.
Mad as hell,
Barlow
Why are slashdot users always so mean and insulting?
Fuck you.
Carnagepro CC
Shit...the site is www.StopTheMPAA.org...sorry i'm half asleep and my html skills went away
This may sound a little farfetched, but I intend to actually do something about it.
My idea took root in this: there are several single-disk Linux distributions out there and most of them are aimed at a specific goal: tomsrtbt is primarily a system-recovery tool, muLinux is more of an internet-access application-centric distribution, the LRP allows a hard drive-less system to act as a router, etc. So why not create a single-disk "Civil Disobedience" distribution that can easily be copied and passed around?
I think this mini-distribution should have these goals:
This is a brief list of the tools that I think should be included: a stripped-down, recent kernel; ash (or some other tiny shell); bzip2; less (for viewing the included source code and documents); a framebuffer MPEG decoder (does such a beast exist?) that incorporates DeCSS; whatever sound decoders are necessary; as many sound-card drivers as are reasonable; dd and a script for cloning the diskette; a scripted petition with form space for country, province/state/whatever, name, address, e-mail address, phone number and PGP key - the last three being optional (more on this in a bit); md5sum; the source for DeCSS, the MPEG decoder, the sound decoder and as many other utilities as there is space left on the diskette.
Ideally, I'd like the user experience to go something like this: receive a diskette copied by a friend (or download and write the image from the net); boot the home computer with a DVD in the drive; some magic happens and the movie plays without a hitch as soon as the system boots into RAM (work needed here); after the film ends, the user is offered the opportunity to read the DeCSS source code (or any other included source code on the diskette - links should be included to the project page appropriate for each tool) and/or sign the petition (again, more on this in a sec); the user is prompted to make one or more copies of this diskette for his or her friends.
The way that I think the petition should work is that when the user fills in the necessary information and hits "I Agree", the content is saved in a file whose name is an md5 checksum of the data, which is then bzip2-compressed and added to a /petition_signatures directory. This directory should be a DOS-diskette filesystem for easy access for non-Linux users. Once the diskette is full up (i.e. the directory can hold no more signatures), the user is prompted to e-mail the contents of the directory back to a central repository that will archive the signatures and eliminate duplicate entries (thus the md5sum).
Now I just need someone to host this server. If no one else is up to it, I'll set up my home system to receive and filter the incoming e-mail.
There are a lot of holes to be filled in this plan, of course. Either way, I could use a lot of help setting this up. Could anyone who is seriously interested in this contact me at bzanin dot home at com (there, that ought to be enough to confuse any moderately intelligent spam-spider - please excuse the inconvenience of my obfuscation)? I would very much like this to take off.
I don't think it will, though, since I don't have an account and no one reads at 0. If interested, could some kind soul repost this? Or is that against a rule somewhere? I hope not.
You can never hope to profit from your ideas. Not even from the effort you expend to realize those ideas. How can you? You shoulder the burden of realization while the hanger-ons reap the benefits. Yep. Recognition sure feels good on an empty stomach.
Anti business? Sure. But RMS's slant doesn't hurt big business. It hurts the little ones. It hurts the guy who want's to spend more times with his kids by letting the distributors do the work. It hurts anyone who don't already have the assets to compete.
Why? Because RMS can't see IP pass its present form. Think about it. If copyright goes away, but I still want you to pay for some creation, I make the expression of the creation tangible. Like a book. But I go even further because a book you can scan and still redistribute. What if your next book came on silicon? Or your next movie? Or your software?
What if your silicon book came with its own embedded processor and executed itself with the output being an AV stream. (And now, you won't be able to simply copy the stream. Check out Intel's patents on crypto. They advocate a method of encrypting a stream and decrypting it by the display circuitry itself.) You reader could then be as dumb as your TV. What if your computer's CPU was simply there for horsepower? And the real program resided in a card half the size of a credit card?
The point is that large companies have the ability to nullify RMS's entire argument. In doing so, they would make the barrier to entry almost insurmountable to all but organizations just as big. In such a situation, the Internet wouldn't mean squat. Are you going to press your own wafers to make a copy of a video?
So what's the ultimate end? A fringe group of idealistic creators who labor for the masses (who, incidentally, could care less).? More likely, a fringe group of idealistic creators who labor for each other. Hm. Sounds familiar.
But this will only happen should RMS machinations succeed. He already has his merry band of followers who chant the "is it GPLed?" mantra. Nevermind, "does it work?" or "who the hell is this programmer anyway?"
RMS hasn't left school. He's a college kid, albeit an old one, with too much time on his hands. He receives an allowance (grants, fellowships, etc) from his daddy (universities, companies, whatever). The only stipulation is that he has to get off his butt and go talk to a crowd already sold on his ideas.
If this rant is a little harsh, it's because I'm tired of all of this us vs. them rhetoric. There's nothing wrong with coding for free or profit. Nothing wrong with using free or proprietary software. What ever scratches your itch.
Didn't americans learn anything from the OJ Simpson case?
actually, that had been known long before the OJ case. the real lesson learned from the OJ case is the jury system that was used by whites to carry out miscarriages of justice against minorities can now be used to exact a little bit of revenge. more and more juries will exonerate minorities when it's clear that race plays a role in prosecution.
Your forgetting that people, meaning the government, have decided they can get more cash from tobacco's corpse now than is worth milking them for for another 30 years.
Keep in mind, Phillip Morris makes about $0.30 cents per pack of MArlboro circa 1996, while the gov't was collecting $1.85 a pack back then in taxes on it.
Tobacco and alcohol have been subject to "sin" taxes for decades. The theory behind that was to make them pay for the societal issues resulting from the use of those products, i.e. gov't sees cash, gov't takes cash.
It's not about protecting health, its sure as hell not about protecting "kids" Why use the tobacco money for SOcial Security if the point is to save kids?
Ditto for the guns thing, but thats another tax and spend and lie and take away your rights rant.
On a similar note: I've been a musician since I was about 6 years old. I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but I have been accepted to some great schools, and have even won some awards. The point I'm trying to make is that if I wanted to make a career our of music, I probably wouldn't have a lot of trouble.
However, I have no desire to *ever* make music my primary occupation. Why? Because the entertainment industry is filled with people like the guy who originally said "Artists will have no incentive to create. ". How much do you want to bet that this guy has never created anything in his life?
The entertainment industry is filled with liars and cheats, and this is from the mouth of a musician
Oh, really? Telling people how to break encryption schemes is perfectly legitimate--it's fundamental to how the whole cryptographic community operates. Comments like yours illustrate one reason why restrictions on free speech are dangerous--the people making the restrictions are usually too clueless to avoid doing damage.
Next I tried FreeBSD. It seemed fine, in fact, easier to install than Linux, but ... once I tried to tighten up the security on the box, I found FreeBSD 's biggest flaw: security. I've heard that Free/Open/NetBSD are similar. Therefore, they're all insecure. I tried the ipf technology, sepcified the rule file I created, ipf -f [file]. But it told me the device wasn't configured. Since I had been online with the box, that was an absurd statement. My network card interface, ed1, was up and running perfectly. I ran the debugging mode, but the only advice it could offer me was: "ioctl(SOIADDR): Bad file descriptor".
BSD actually doesn't seem like such a bad system, but if you consider that their firewall code seems to be not be ready for the prime time, I'd say you're better off with Linux for now. Perhaps when the ipf is ready for the mainstream, it'll be better. For now, Linux is definitely the way to go. Despite the easier syntax of ipf, the system really, unfortuantely, is clearly not ready.
I think you forget what this thread was supposed to be all about - The whole DeCSS thing. This is not about avoiding paying for artist's work. It's about actually being allowed to enjoy it your own way once you have paid for it, instead of having it dictated to you from on-high that there is only one proper way to enjoy the artist's work. Why the fuck should the MPAA give a rat's ass whether I can view DVD's purchased in the "wrong" country, or that I can view them on the "wrong" machine, with the "wrong" software? That's what this is all about. If pirating were the only issue, there'd be no point to DeCSS, since you can copy a DVD verbatim without breaking through the code.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Beethoven died a pauper and was burried in a mass grave.
- BioPages.html:
Ex-squeeze me?
From http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/Strasse/3732/Beet
Beethoven's funeral took place at three o'clock in the afternoon, on March 29th. A crowd of possibly over 10,000 (and maybe not quite 20,000, as Gerhard von Breuning reports) had gathered in front of the Schwarzspanierhaus to bid farewell to him.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
*We* don't. The MPAA does, however, and that is the crux of this case.
If only "common" sense was actually that common...
Well a boy and his father are likely to be put in jail for 2 years. How much do you value 2 years of your life? If portions of the DMCA are upheld in court than you will be told what you are allowed to view for entertainment and how you are allowed to view it, all by an increasingly smaller number of ever larger corporations. While you are right in that the oppression sufferred by blacks is a worse offense than this it is by no means insignificant. I find it about the same as peoples right to bear arms. My right to bear arms is as a last defense against a corrupt government but you will never no the government is corrupt if there are only a select few giving you only the information they want you to see and hear. These corporations need to be put in check.
"What are the three words guaranteed to humiliate men everywhere?
In Republican America phones tap you.
Fear of the reprocussions of the Reginald Denny verdict (LA Riots) (irregardless of whether that verdict was right or wrong, I'm not getting into that here, I really wont) - is the reason OJ got off. If OJ went to jail for murder - or to the needle, you KNOW there would be trouble.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Blah, furging HTML.
You mean M-< C-[space] M-> M-w C-y, don't you?
For your right!
To make /. AC spam-free
t_t_b
--
I think not; therefore I ain't®
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
"As a long-time Slashbot, you know perfectly well that AC posts start at 0, logged-in posts start at 1 and that the bitchslap causes you to post at a default of -1."
Quite right.
I stand corrected.
Although I more meant the interactive bitchslap, rather than the automagic...
page now in rev. 2.0
t_t_b
--
I think not; therefore I ain't®
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
Really? It's that cut and dried? I thought there were some highly paid legal minds working to determine that.
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
Yeah, yeah, should have hit Preview...
I think I understand what is going on here but it isn't neccesarly self evident.
Lots of people are saying, "DMCA and copywrite are the law, so you are wrong."
In response someone said, "Slavery was the law at one point, but helping slaves escape wasn't wrong."
And you said, "Ahh but their lives depended on it, We don't need to see movies"
According to Kohlburg
The first poster would be a #4 The second a #6 And you would be a #5
In my undergrad ethics class one of the more modern ethical philosophers we learned about, and one of my favorites is Lawrence Kohlburg. A rough interpitation of his 6 stages of moral development are as follows
Preconventional
1. I'll do what ever feels good at the time
2. You scratch my back I'll scratch yours
Conventional
3. Kiss butt and serve those in power and you get what you deserve
4. The rules are always right. If we all followed we would be OK
Postconventional
5. Society's total logic is the correct (halfway between 4 and 6)
6. Decision making based on logical conclusions that are elusive and bigger than us.
Ironicly the test question the study that fueled Kohlburg's conclutions, revolved around violating a drug makers IP rights to save a dying woman.
So please don't rip apart people who are calling 4s 3s and so forth what they are. I think there are a lot of 6s on /. who see this DVD thing for what it is, an attempt to overly inflate scarcity on IP even further than it is already inflated. Markets work best with moderate scarcity, somthing region codes further defeat. Since DVDs on Linux defeat region codes, the MPAA hates DVD on Linux. Their "Hollywood Pork" law, the DMCA, is not based on higher logic (the market serves all so best to retain maximum profit/thouroughput) but out of lazyness (little work for much reward.) The MPAA, RIAA, etc whatever, act out of self interest not interest of the artist. We all see though it. Do you?
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
Here are 5 and 6 directly from a textbook of mine.
5. Social contract orientation. Right action is defined in terms of general indiviual rights and standards which have been critically examined and agreed upon by the whole society. The diversity of personal values and opinions is recognised, and there is an emphisis upon procedural rules for reaching concencus. There is a corresponding emphisis upon the "legal point of view" but with a regonition of the possibility of changing the laws out of rational considerations of social welfare. Outside the legal realm, freely arrived at agreements are the major elements of obligation.
I said "5. Society's total logic is the correct (halfway between 4 and 6)" I don't think I was too far off the mark here perhaps 5 is better descibed as peer review.
6. Universal ethical princible orientation. Right action is defined according to abstract, autonomously adopted ethical priciples appealing to logical comprehensiveness, universiality, and consistancy. Basiclly, these principles are justice, the reciprocity and equality of human rights and respect for the dignity of human beings as individual persons.
I said "6. Decision making based on logical conclusions that are elusive and bigger than us." Look at 6 dosn't it smack of a logic beyond the law? A higher logic perhaps? If Killing was logical as the right thing to do, Charles Manson and David Koresh would have been 6s. They didn't follow the law or peer review but their own higher logical order.
6 is a bit more complex than I represented it, so I will be more complete with it in the future.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
Jon,
Where did you go to law school? I believe the whole point of the trial is to determine what if anything has been do wrong. Your supposition that Jon Jensenson has done something wrong, or that 2600 has done something wrong is based on what? Your opinion? Well, your opinion is not the one of importance here. The courts will decide and even they may be wrong, in which case the law may need to be changed.
DiVX is not the issue. It is CSS on DVDs and the DeCSS program written by Jon and company. I have seen no proof that the MPAA has produced to show and piracy related to DeCSS.
Put it this way....even with non copyrighted material, you have a the right to fair use of your property and freedom of speech. The government can limit your property to a certain degree, but it needs constitutionally sound reasons to do so. Fair Use is your civil rights. Anytime copyright conflicts with Fair Use, Copyright looses - and there is a slew of Court Cases upholding this.
Copyright is by definition limited. Property rights is by definition unlimited. The government must justify limiting your property rights, or your freedom of speech.
As such, the DMCA was passed by Congress, not under the authority of the Copyright clasue of the constitution, but under the COMMERCE claus. In the end, I'm fairly certain that it will be struck down in the Supreme Court because Congress doesn't have the power in the Constitution to use either the Copyright Clause OR the Commerce Claus to limit the Constitutional Guarantees of Fair Use.
The purpose of creating a seperate act which specifically reinenforces "Fair Use", is two fold:
A - To prevent the chance (however slim) that the DMCA is upheld similarly to the Tawdy Court's ruling in Dred Scott which declared "Negro's" non-human and property...
B- To end the COST of defending Fair Use by running every damn case to the Supreme Court.
I don't trust the Court ENOUGH, nor do I want to keep wasting money and time defending myself against morally unethical companies like Time-Warner (the company which invented the Sub-liminal Ad) who have inexhaustable pockets of income.
We should also include a provision where the Copyright Office can remove the Copyright of any company which uses it's Copyright in an abusive manner, to obstruct the flow of the information needed for citizens to participate as equals in society and government, which creates too high of a ceiling for fair education, which endangers free speech, or uses copyrights to prevent economic advancement or fair compitition.
Ruben Safir
New Yorker for Fair Use
http://www.mrbrklyn.com/amsterdam.html http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Test
http://www.mrbrklyn.com/amsterdam.html http://www.brooklyn-living.com
I'm also tired of Judges who refuse to do their jobs, like Judge Kaplan, and profess to have knowledge that they don't. Kaplan's behavior on the Bench seems to merit his impeachment.
I'm also tired of Judges and Lawyers who can't count past the Number 2 and trolls which represent the MPAA.
---And I am tired of people who are not lawyers not understanding laws, especially one as simple and direct as this one. I've posted this before but obviously it didn't penetrate into some people's skulls so I'll tear it down # by #.--
--- 1) Your first sentence is correct - your second sentence is what YOU think it should be. But it's not and go whine to congress. Currently it's illegal to circumvent CSS no matter what you believe or want to think it should be. DeCSS circumvents CSS - that's exactly what the authors of the program say it does, that's what the defense stipulated to in court that it does, that is what every single expert on the stand has said it does. Please don't continue to pretend to be ignorant to it's true function. --
Actually, nearly every Lawyer I have spoken too disagrees with your assessment.
To quote The Village Voice
"If the judge finds for the plaintiff, and the decision isn't knocked down on appeal," says Yochai Benkler, a professor of information law at New York University, "it will create an environment that's closed like nothing we've ever seen before."
Since I work for NYU, I called Benkler. I asked him about Kaplan's decision that even if the DeCSS was created for reverse engineering purposes, even then the DMCA would not permit the posting of a LINK to the DeCSS code. It seems completely incompatible with the plain meaning of the reverse engineering clause in section 1201 of the DMCA and the Fair Use clause. It is his opinion that Judge Kaplan is making a major stretch in claiming that while the DMCA is so poorly written that it directly stands in conflict of itself, that reverse engineering is OK for an individual user, but that dissemination of the Code would be a violation. It is also his opinion that the DMCA will not stand a review by the Supreme Court if Judge Kaplan's ruling is a correct interpretation of the act.
--- 2) Reverse engineering has some very narrow criteria. And perhaps DeCSS meet these. Do you suggest that every single person using DeCSS uses it for the educational value reverse engineering provides. AND you conveniently forget that even reverse engineering still does not allow you to simple ignore existing copyright protections.---
Reverse engineering has nothing to do with education. Educational copying of copyrighted material is a Fair Use as determined by the Supreme Court and legislated into the copyright code under section 107 of the Copyright Law. Reverse Engineering, by definition, is a protected right which anyone can partake of without permission of the designer of the original device. This is obvious and is considered Prima Faca evidence. Compact did not have IBM's permission to reverse engineer the PC.
--The copyright holder still maintains control over access to his material and no matter HOW you got to the material (unencrypted movie file) the copyright owner STILL owns it and can dictate (like it or not) how and by whom it's accessed. This is not a valid exception and case law supports this. --
Legally speaking - this whole statement is just wrong. First of all, Copyright holders NEVER have the right to maintain control over access to works no matter HOW they distribute the material. The only thing a Copyright holder owns is a license to a limited commercial monopoly of a work. They can not prevent anyone who obtains a copy to limit when they view it, how they view, and with whom they view it with, who they sell their copy to, or how they view it. I think you just made this up.
-- 3) Too bad copying entire movies is not even remotely "fair use" --
Actually - making a copy of a work for personal use, educational purposes, archival purposes, and even to give away for FREE is exactly what Fair Use doctrine is as developed as the Supreme Courts response to abuses of Copyright which inhibited Constitutionally guaranteed civil rights to Property and Freedom of Speech. It was later legislated directly into the Copyright Statute which can be read at New Yorkers for Fair Use.
--too bad that no one is using DeCSS to critique a small sample of a movie. Too bad that there is no need to use DeCSS to perform "fair use" and that it could be performed by other means and so fair use is not an excuse for circumvention. AND, even if fair use was the honest intention - that still does not override the prohibition on circumvention. You must learn how to read law.--
What's too bad is that you fail to understand what your reading in the Law. A purchaser of a Disk does not enter into any contract with the Copyright Owner, or licensing agreement. They can do anything with the disk that is guaranteed under the Constitution as part of their civil rights to ownership of property. This right of property is a guarantee of the Constitution. Copyright does not extinguish an individuals right to his property. He can therefor do what ever he wishes to the disk aside from commercially exploiting it, which is reserved for the Copyright Owner. The Copyright Owner of the material has a limited license from the Government. The Disk owner is the property owner and is not limited by any licenses.
--4) While DeCSS, the source code of that program, is protected as free speech. There is NOTHING in free speech which gives license to violate copyrights.--
This is not the question in front of the court. The question in front of the court is if there is ANYTHING in Copyright which can limit Free Speech. If the Code is Free Speech, it is protected under the Constitution. Copyright can not prevent Free Speech, and that is part of the definition of The Fair Use Doctrine.
-- Again, precidence and the preponderence of case law demonstrates this. Do some research instead of regurgitating EFF BS--
Again - I think you made this up..
--- 5) You sound like an MS hater. This case has nothing to do with antitrust or misuse of copyright and you'll find that neither of those lame defenses was even attempted, even by this lame defense team. ---
Right.... and you are what??? A Troll?
--Copyright owners are free to decide how their IP is distributed and by whom and how it's viewed. Get a grip - stop pulling terms that don't apply outta yer butt! ---
Actually - they are NOT, which is why the DMCA is likely to be struck down by the Supreme Court.
http://www.mrbrklyn.com/amsterdam.html http://www.brooklyn-living.com
OK, I suspect you're trolling but I'm going to reply anyway...
1. The photo is of Goldstein expressing shock and dismay at how easy it is to find pirated VHS tapes. He's not selling them or doing anything else that could be defined as "ill-behavior."
2. Posting a link to a photo of Declan's in a comment means that he "enjoys a rapport with slashdot"?!
3. I'm the one who posted the photo, because I thought it was funny. If you think mentioning a link is an ethical violation, blame me, not my fellow /. authors.
Jamie McCarthy
Jamie McCarthy
jamie.mccarthy.vg
> But comparing your ability to watch a movie to
> someone's ability to make a living for
> themselves, to attend a decent school- that is a
> confusion of scale that I just don't understand.
You don't think that the interpretation of
intellectual property (a legal fiction to begin
with) influences how people make their livings, or
how well they will be educated?
This case is about much more than watching movies.
Apparently you aren't confused about what the
specific civil rights cases were _really_ all
about. So why your confusion on what this case
is _really_ about?
Cheers,
Richard
> I think this is an issue of fair use and not of
> muzzling a free press or free distribution of
> information. It is acknowledged as law that some
> information is owned- i.e movies and music.
No. It is legally granted that some information is copyrightable, and that the copyright can be owned. That's not the same as that the information itself is owned.
> Fair Use is not about the government telling you
> what you can or cannot say, or what of your own
> information can be made available- it determines
> what you can do with information that is belong
> to someone else.
No. The information doesn't belong to someone
else. The copyright on that information is owned
by someone else. The issue of fair use is not
"trying to figure out what person X can do with
person Y's rightfully-owned information". It
is trying to determine what the powers are
inherent in the instructment of the law, the
copyright, that Y owns.
For instance...
If I own a contract that says I own person Z
(aka slavery), or that person Z is indentured
to me under some set of conditions (sharecropping?)
then the law as of 2000 A.D. has determined (thank
the gods!) that these legal instruments are worth
nada, diddley, bupkus. Contracts can't be
written that are inherently illegal, as is
slavery, indenture, etc.
What these court cases are doing right now, bit
by bit, is trying to figure out what a copyright
contract/legal instrument actually is, what
legally enforcable powers it grants, etc.
Btw, good discussion. Your points are very
interesting and are prompting some valuable
thinking on the issue.
Cheers,
Richard
yes, thats definatly him!
:)
i find the picture rather amusing... im sure we are all aware of the issues
you have a great point tho, you can get anything you want in that area...
Cybie! aka Ralph Bonnell
this is a good point - when everything, including justice, is bought and sold, all we can do is choose not to buy the shit (movies) the MPAA is peddling.
Have you seen Ironstayn vs Supergovernment yet?
The LAPD got caught trying to frame a guilty man.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
Am I right in thinking that the musical artists contracts often require that they release a certain number of songs in a given timescale? If so then would the removal of this "corporate pressure" not increase the quality of the artists work?
Fact: DeCSS circumvents CSS
Fact: That is, currently (like it or not),illegal.
Fact: The judge has no choice but to do easy math: 1+1=Defendents lose.
This is the whole problem with this debate. Who says bypassing CSS is illegal?
As far as I see it, there are only two distinct issues before the court... all the rest are either politically motivated or hypothetical "perfect world" arguments.
Issue 1: Is it illegal to use a utility that came about as a result of reverse engineering?
Remember - CSS wasn't reverse engineered in the States, therefore the question lies with the legal status of the resulting product ie. DeCSS
Issue 2: Is circumventing CSS actually a violation of the DCMA?
CSS is purported to be a copy protection mechanism, however, as many have pointed out, CSS's primary purpose is as a playback protection mechanism. eg. you can take a bit for bit copy of a DVD and play it back on a machine equipped with CSS without a problem.
If CSS can be shown to have no impact as a copy protection mechanism, then circumventing it cannot be in violation of that section of the DCMA.
IANAL, but to my mind if the answer to both of these is 'NO' then the MPAA should be fighting a lost cause.
"Fair Use" may be a valid argument against the implementation of the DCMA in general but it has no real relevance in this case at this point in time.
M@T
'sapientia potestas est'
Then maybe you can answer the question that MPAA can't.
Can you tell the court in what way CSS is used to protect a copyrighted work from piracy?
I contend that CSS is used to control distribution and pricing of DVDs in different countries and has nothing whatsoever to do with protecting the copyrighted work from exploitation.
Given this fact, the bypassing of CSS via DeCSS cannot be found in violation of the DCMA in reference to the circumvention of technical protection measures of a copyrighted work and I'd kindly ask the Judge to dismiss this case.
M@T
'sapientia potestas est'
- Joe
-Joe
This is not entirely true. Mozart was paid by the Archduke of Salzburg; Bach was paid by countless patrons including the Tomanenkirche in Leipzig. For these and countless other art music composers, the motivation to compose was to make a buck -- their patrons shelled out the dough for their own entertainment and social status. As a result, many works were "borrowed", "improved upon", and misattributed, because the patrons didn't care.
Beethoven, on the other hand, invented "copyright protection" -- he had few patrons, controlled his own works and aggressively litigated against people who performed his works without a license and/or who tried to re-publish his scores. He didn't make any money except through sales and royalties (he made a bit teaching and conducting, but that wasn't where the real money was -- professional conductors weren't really commonplace until after Berlioz).
So where is the analogue to today's situation? Artists are paid by record companies, whose "patronage" is encouraged by a profit motive. Since the record companies view both the music itself and any instantiation or performance of the music as intellectual property -- which they feel they must do to protect their bottom line -- there is no incentive for them to pay artists if they can't control the profits.
I'm not saying it's right -- but you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who'd pay a hefty comission to Britney Spears for a new work merely out of humanistic altruism or love of art. The record companies do very little to encourage art, because "challenging" (unlike "insipid") is a synonym for "unprofitable".
~wog
Fundamentally, I see no difference between making a cassette copy of a legally owned CD (or making MP3's from it, for that matter) to listen to in my car (or on my computer), and making a DivX copy of my VHS or DVD movie to watch on my computer.
Is there any reason this wouldn't apply? Is there any legitimate claim the MPAA can make to render DivX illegal? (I worry about that these things, since these days we have "law sieges" instead of lawsuits. The plaintiff gathers an army of lawyers and PR personnel marches against the defendant, who has to close up the metaphorical gates and wait it out with what lawyers and PR personnel they can. Whoever can keep the money going to their troops the longest wins [usually]. Scary.)
Joe Sixpack is dead!
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
There was a semi-recent article about the electronic signatures bill (and how it had nothing to do with crypto), where I noticed some interesting clauses.
It said (best (IANAL) I could tell) that the legal validity of a contract is not affected if the signing is automatic without the knowledge of the signer, that reciept by the other party of proof that the contract was signed is not needed, and that if the (supposed) signer hasn't even been informed about the contract, it is still valid/legally binding. All of which is pretty silly if you ask me, and probably about as constitutional as a rats ass.
Anyway, why not just ping Time Warner et. al. with a very large packet. One with the data part being, rather than a random string of bytes, a carefully crafted contract, having them agree to whatever you darn please?
Probably some obvious legal problem with it, but it's just a thought.
Yeah you should prepare for the day when the UN is going to come in with guns and kill you.
First off, you stupid bastard, I was talking about making preparations to keep our data and methods of communication secure. Strong Crypto and such.
Or you could of course wake up to the fact that other countries without guns are not having any problems.
Like Australia, which saw a surge in their crime rate after their most recent gun ban? Or how about 1930s-1940s Europe, gun bans kept those people safe didn't they?
What is it with you people that every discussion about the power of the people versus the power of corporate and government interests must degenerate into a dialog about how evil guns are?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Although the mailing lists mentioned above are certainly good for insightful discussion, I do not think that mailing lists will serve well to get our voices heard since there is usually a lot of discussion that can bury good, insightful, and intelligent comments. I think it would be best to try to unify the voices as to why the current copyright violations are NOT simply wrong or immoral.
I have started a web site, www.digitalrenegades.org, for anyone that would like to write something to be posted in the form of an essay, a short opinion, or as a response to an article (in the mainstream media, for example). If you have any suggestions please feel free to e-mail. I think we need to unify our dissent to show that these violations are not immoral but ultimately caused at least in part by corporate domination.
Since I already mostly live the life you describe, I feel qualified to address this issue. :-) For the most part, I don't watch television (although I did watch The Simpsons once last week). I see no more than a couple dozen movies a year, and half of those are not from Hollywood. I don't read news periodicals, and I don't watch TV news or late-night talk shows. Music CDs I mostly buy directly from the artists who record them.
Overwhelmingly, most of my entertainment and information comes from the Internet. I have fun by chatting with friends spread across three continents, and I get the skinny on what's happening from people who know first-hand by reading news-discussion sites like Slashdot.
What's it like? I wouldn't have it any other way! My quality of life would take a sharp turn for the worse if I had to rely on the mass media or use it regularly.
That was exactly the point that I drew from the photo, was there any other possible conclusion?
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Joh's deposition
6 MR. SIMS: Your Honor, object on relevance to this
7 whole line.
8 THE COURT: Tell me why.
9 MR. SIMS: Excuse me?
10 THE COURT: Tell me why.
11 MR. SIMS: Because the issue in the case has nothing
12 to do with why this person created an executable for DeCSS.
13 It has to do with what its function is and what Mr. Corley has
14 done. 15 THE COURT: I am going to hear the evidence, within
16 reasonable time limits, for what it's worth. Go ahead. I
17 mean the man is here from Norway, I might as well hear him.
We could always create a system like this...
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
For physical objects, you are correct. For intellectual property, you are incorrect, or will be in the near future. Because like it or not, the fact is that Joe Consumer is now able to obtain intellectual property for (approximately) free over the Internet.
I don't see that the consumer should tell the artist that they are only allowed to charge (say) $5 for their album.
The artist may charge any price he wants. On the other hand, the consumer is free to pay any price he wants, because the artist isn't able to restrict supply.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
That stuff is indeed informative, but you're reading through a filter. The transcripts are the read deal.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
i'm asking someone to explain to me again when production of art became the same activity as production, say, of canned corn.
I'd say that the similarity is that we want to be rewarded for the efforts of our labours, whether we are making music or canned corn. Perhaps each person will hope for different rewards. One person might be satisfied with the warm fuzzy feeling they get from knowing that they produced great canned corn. The next person might be more interested in cash. But both persons are looking to be rewarded.
I'm no musician, but if I was, should I not have the right to decide what reward I deserve for my creation? Should I be forced to give away my creations for free because this is what someone else thinks is the right thing for me do?
I'm sort of tired of hearing that anyone who produces music (or any sort of "art") and wishes to be financially compensated for their efforts is somehow not really an artist or (even more condescending) not talented!
It's about giving consumers the right to decide the price of music not some record label guy.
Excuse me?
The consumer gets to determine the price of a product? Only in as much as the market generally influences the cost of any item by agreeing or refusing to pay the asking price.
I don't see that the consumer should tell the artist that they are only allowed to charge (say) $5 for their album. If the artist feels that they will charge $5000 for the album, I feel that is their right. Of course, I doubt they will get many sales at that price, and maybe they will decide to lower the price to $5, but that is their choice. If they insist they want to hold out for $5K/copy, why then they are entirely free to do so.
...giving your friend a copy of your DVD is considered fair use by some people.
Who exactly is "some people" and what makes their opinion relevant?
I believe that in most countries the unauthorized reproduction and distribution of copyrighted material is legally wrong (illegal). Now "some people" may consider that there is nothing morally wrong with it, and may think that it is "fair use" and who knows - I might even agree with them. But they (our) opinion is not relevant in the courts.
Still, in these comments there is subtext which says, "a true artist will create art even if he doesn't get paid. Anyone else has 'sold out', and is just trying to be The Man." The reality is, with the exception of the wealthy, is that artists, like programmers, chefs, and day-care workers, must get paid for their work if they are going to continue to do it. We shouldn't expect free food from chefs, free health care from doctors, free programs from programmers, nor do we label them "Sell-outs" or less than "true-professionals" if they expect/require to be paid for their work.
Hear hear!
There is entirely too much of this "If they wanna be paid they can't be real artists and obviously have no talent" nonsense. What, you are only allowed to earn any financial reward by selling tee-shirts and going on tours? Rubbish! What about someone who (perhaps for health reasons) can't or simply does not want to play their music live? And what exactly does selling tee-shirts have to do with making music anyway?
I hope this was posted as joke... Is that even emmanuel? The man in the photo doesn't look as old, nor does he have the same skin/hair tone. Also, I dont think any Hope2k hats have been printed... and why would somebody selling dvds been in the street.. they're always on the sidewalk side.
I think people are a bit concerned about who stands to loose if there were to be massive dvd piracy caused by decss. This is not like the napster case, where individual starving recording artists stand to loose a little bit (whilst the riaa looses big, but thats another story). The people that stand to loose money are the huge movie companies. Not the actors/writers/directors.. they're all paid up front (with maybe small kickbacks from movie sales). The people who make money on the DVD sales are the fatcats like Jack Valenti.
So if some 13 yearold in bumsville idaho wants to download a crappy looking divx rip of some crappilly written hollywood blockbuster, is it really worth anybodys time to weep a single tear for the movie monarchs?
How many divx rips have you seen of films from indie directors, films in which the directors only chance to recoup some money is on the dvd... not many.
I just can't feel sorry for the mpaa...
For all you know he could have been saying these are the people they should be going after instead of the guys who want to play their legit DVD discs. He could have been pointing out how irrelevant this to "stopping piracy" is since most of the pirate movies there weren't even out on DVD.
The problem being, that the number of people who understand, or (arguably) CAN understand the depth of this problem represent an overwhelmingly small percentage of the registered voters. There are probably more people EMPLOYED by the MPAA and it's members than people who are as concerned about this case as we are.
The democratic process, as a prerequisite, calls for an INFORMED ELECTORATE. That means that the masses who run the country must be educated with regards to the issues they're deceiding. The average voter couldn't care less about DeCSS, let alone take the time required to form an educated opinion.
Put simply, democracy cannot function in this situation, unless we find a way to teach more than half of the American population how this case effects them, and I'm not optimistic about that happening.
"You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help" -- Calvin
They _did_ take this to the highest court possible. It's legal procedure - gotta start at the bottom and work your way up. Appeals are totally different from what most Americans think they are - an appeal is basically "the judge below got the law wrong" not a "well, we don't agree with the decision."
150 years ago John Brown said that slavery was wrong, even though it was the law of the land. He protested in the only way he knew how, which was a flagrant violation of the law, was captured, branded a traitor, and hung.
Today slavery is illegal. Today slavery is considered abhorent. Today we call John Brown a hero, even though he broke the law.
Washington broke the law. Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin broke the law. Susan B. Anthony broke the law. William Wallace broke the law. Mohandas Gandhi broke the law. Martin Luther King, Jr. broke the law. Schindler broke the law. Thousands of people like them broke the law, not for personal gain, or revenge, or anger, but because the law was wrong.
A law is only good if it benefits the whole of the people being affected by it. A law is wrong if it benefits a select few to the detriment of the many.
"The dead do not shoo-bop-aloo-bah." -- Kai, 'Lexx'
You can find my copy on my main site/page at http://www.linuxgod.net.
If I puchase, buy, or get somthing for free I WILL do what I want to with it reguardless of what ANY corporation or government says, and I hope some company emails me about it because they will get a reply they won't like.
Also, the MPAA tried to get the injunction modified so that anything that was "unauthorised" (such as LiViD) was also made illegal. I dont think has been granted, because they also wanted the injunction to including linking to the DeCSS bin/source. WHich is funny, because they'd have to shut down their own search engines ;) (Try "DeCSS" in Disney's/Go's search engine. Fun)
Qoute: 1. For an Order, pursuant to Rule 65 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, modifying this Court's preliminary injunction Order, dated January 20, 2000, by adding the following to the indicated paragraphs of said order:
a) add to paragraph 2 the name of additional defendant 2600 Enterprises, Inc., and delete the names of defendants Shawn C. Reimerdes and Roman Kazan,
b) add to paragraphs 2(a) and 2(b), after the words "posting on," the language "or linking to," and insert commas after the words "trafficking in,"
c) revise paragraph 3(b) to read "'CSS' means the Contents Scramble System used to encrypt, scramble or otherwise protect the contents of certain DVDs from unauthorized access or copying,"
d) revise paragraph 3(c) to read " 'DeCSS' means any computer program, file or device that may be used to decrypt or unscramble the contents of DVDs that are protected, or otherwise to circumvent the protection afforded, by CSS and that permits the unauthorized access or copying of the contents or any portion thereof,"
e) add (d) to paragraph 3 as follows: "a 'hyperlink' means software instructions which, when executed, cause a signal to be sent to another location where data or material can be retrieved for viewing, copying or further transmission,"
f) add (e) to paragraph 3 as follows: " 'linking' means provision by the defendants, at their respective websites, of hyperlinks to other websites which are offering to the public, providing, providing hyperlinks to, or otherwise trafficking in DeCSS or any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof described in paragraph 2(b),"
My email addy? should be easy enough.
Errr, there is auctally.
LiViD is one such open source DVD player.
css-auth (which authenticates with the drive) was auctally written by someone on the LiViD team and was used in DeCSS (which is GPLed thus).
It does work, a few months ago I saw the Matrix played off DVD under Linux. So yes, it does work, and there is player (Which, I am in no doubt that if the MPAA wins will be delcared illegal, at least in the US.) Fortunatly, it is GPLed. They can't stop Open Source software, because it will simply be "smuggled" over borders, and the developers will still develop it.
All it will mean is that you will have to get it from foriegn soil.
My email addy? should be easy enough.
I had thought this "obey authority regardless of whether it is right or wrong" question had been settled at Nuremberg.
If we learn nothing from history, we have surely earned a bleak future.
.. all those who went to go see X-Men and put money in the MPAA's pocket to help them continue to fight this case.
I didn't go see it. My friends laughed at me, told me to get over it, that my $8.00 won't matter, and they're right -- it probably won't. However I have moral issues with paying a company to take away my rights.
We could sit here and play "Six Degrees of the MPAA" all day long, and I'm sure that even to the staunchest MPAA opponents, they'd find some way in which they were contributing, indirectly or not. (Example: I watch ESPN, which is owned by Disney).. am I going to stop -everything- I do in regards to the MPAA? No, probably not.. but people should consider doing something here and there, passing out flyers, and trying to EDUCATE people into what is happening, instead of spending your Friday night and $8.00 to help prosecute the people.
(/end rant)
BilldaCat
The foundation of today's news media is organizations like United Press International, BBC News, National Public Radio News, the Associated Press, the New York Times. These are all outstanding news organizations.
The Washington Post (a pretty good paper) owns Newsweek, an alright magazine, though its website is now hosted by MSNBC.
US News and World Report is also pretty good.
Skipping the rest of the good newspapers and the plethora of great magazines around the country (as well as the really bad ones) we get to Corporate Media. Time isn't really bad per se, but knowing what we know about Time Warner (I am an employee of the company) I personally stay away.
I stay away from all U.S. television news sources for reliable information, except for the excellent Newshour with Jim Lehrer and C-SPAN, both independent media. The former rocks, and I live in the neighborhood where Lehrer grew up; the latter isn't really news but has very informative content on current issues.
Okay! I hope I have convinced everyone that you don't have to worry about your news source if you know where to go. Even if Time Warner bought up half of these news souces somehow, it could never get them all. Also remember that if good journalists realize they are working for a company with a deteriorating reputation, they jump ship.
Are there to be different tiers of who can run what media ??? "Separate and Unequal" is even worse than "Separate but Equal" Which is the effect of using only MPAA-sanctioned players for media YOU'VE ALREADY PURCHASED. . . .all for their own maximized profits. . .
No, it doesn't have the karma of fighting a local government trying to keep its' priviledges, just that of fighting a multi-corporate entity that wants to separate you from your hard-earned money, and then tells you how you have to use what you just bought. .
Ahhh...but the true irony is that the RIAA is claiming that he would not die rich. He would still die a pauper because he would have beenc heated out of all those millions by the pirates online. The truth of the matter is that while piracy is illegal, the fact of the matter is that it would be less of an issue if the music industry had simply tried to find a way to make money using technology instead of trying to crush it before it ever has a chance to erode their monopoly on the CD industry. The recent lawsuit laying blame on the recording companies for price gouging is evidence that the tide is turning. They need to turn this corner. Piracy, however wrong, will not stop as long as the internet is alive and kicking. If they would adopt a sensible music pricing system, many people would flock to it.
I believe that most people want to pay for it and realize that not paying for it would bankrupt the artist. $15 a CD when I know that it couldn't cost more than $2 to make the thing makes me angry to say "I'll show them. Where do I download Napster." I am not saying it is right, but that is what makes those borderline pirates cross the line. The rest will pirate no matter how much it is.
I know a guy right now who's household income is damn near $200K a year and he still downloads his ass off. It doesn't matter what it is. He could afford to buy it but he doesn't. However, if he likes a product enough he will purchase things in support of it. He buys self-teaching books on the products. He buys games he likes the most. He buys tons of CD's to burn the stuff to. Now why does he do this? It is obvious he can afford the stuff, but he doesn't buy it. Why? I don't know and he probably couldn't tell you. But he will also shell out $1000 for books to learn all the stuff. he is thekind of person that would steal it no matter what, but would also go and buy a bunch of CD's if he thought it would help a starving artist. His kind is strange that way.
----------
Twisted Little Gnome - The Podcasting Network http://www.twistedlittlegnome.com
Keep in mind that there's nothing perfect about paper, either. I would wager that for every pound of readable paper materials that exist, 100 pounds have been destroyed by the ravages of time and dumb people.
If you want something to survive for the ages, engrave it on stainless steel and seal it in a vacuum tomb. Otherwise, all bets are off. : )
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
, "Of course, I wanted to be paid for it, and I was. Just as Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, and countless others were paid, despite the absence of copyright protection."
Yeah, there are some great examples. Beethoven died a pauper and was burried in a mass grave.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Great link! I had no idea that Project Gutenberg existed, but I am certainly interested now.
;)
That said, in my defense I linked to the book at fatbrain , and it is the Dover Thrift classic edition for $1. So if you like having a paper copy to bring with you when you are *gasp* away from a computer, and you don't want to wear out your printer, then this just might be worth it
LL
"If you are falling, dive." -Joseph Campbell
Only a fool would think that laws are more important then moral. Here in Brasil, we have corrupt politicians that create laws to benefit a few over the goods of the majority. Those law are not created based on the morals of the people, but they are based on private goals of a few. What is the result of this? In Brasil we have two classes of law, some that are followed by the people (those are the one that follow the morals) and those there simply don't catch and people simply don't follow them.
My guess, that this is the destiny of this law. People will copy their DVDs if they could and it realy don't matter if there is a law against it. Unless of course the goverment start using police force to enforce this law by brutality.
--
"take the red pill and you stay in wonderland and I'll show you how deep the rabitt hole goes"
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
It dosen't matter if we could copy DVDs as easyly as we can watch them. There will alsways be the movies and the box offices and there will always be people that will buy their movies anyway, just because they will come with nice covers and maybe a booklet with pictures and stuff. This is what happen to books, anyone can copy a book with a xerox machine. Does people do it? Yes. Does the book publishing companies died?? NO.
Will people like n'synch dye of hunger? No. A great part of their income is from selling their images to addvertise and stuff, this will still give them enought income to pay them and their producers/distributor.
People in time-warner is not fighting for their lives here, their fighting for their extra mercedes in the garage and the company jet.
--
"take the red pill and you stay in wonderland and I'll show you how deep the rabitt hole goes"
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
Since artistic satisfaction isn't the incentive for creation for all copyrightable works, we must be sure to protect the right of people who create very useful but strictly non-artistic works to make money from their creations.
ObAntiCorp: Corporations Suck!!
(oh wait, i am a corporation...)
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
> Personally, I think that she's a Madonna class performer.
Talk about damning with faint praise...
In this case, could I buy a Ford and a set of "Super Tires" and modify the Ford, tires, or both so I could use them together? Yes. Would either Ford or Chevy be able to sue me because I used either in a manner that they did not license? No.
FWIW, I think the comparisons all gotta go. The U.S. has a constitutional use of copyrights including limited duration and the doctrine of "fair use". This has been extended by case law to include the "right of first sale". The DMCA and various other methods of attempting to control access to information that is already constitutionaly demonstrated to belong to the purchaser is, quite simply, a violation of the rights of U.S. citizens. It needs to be fought, as it is now, in the courts. In addition to the specific suits brought by the Big Business (TM) plaintiffs, I'd like to see a class action civil rights suit brought by owners of DVD's against the the media moguls that are attempting to prevent us from exercising those rights.
Comparisons to other issues and cases do little to place the discussions where they belong, back in the constitution. The "War on Drugs", "Violence in Schools", and other hot button issues have demonstrated just how easily citizens will relinguish their rights when the issues are phrased and framed by those that want to remove them. We should not get caught up in what the DVD issue is like. We should ignore the fact that the DMCA is stupid, annoying or even unenforcable. We should focus on the fact that it is illegal.
Incorrect, and boldly so.
If I take a 5-second clip of a movie to add to my Film Critic class, this is what is known as fair use. This is legal. In order to do this with a DVD, I would need a tool to decode it. DeCSS is such a tool. DeCSS can (and this is what the lawyers are bantering about) be considered legal under the Fair Use clause.
I don't much mind when people state their opinions, but try and keep your "facts" at least somewhat informed.
.02
My
Quux26
My
Quux26
www.crashspace.net
Ville Oksanen
Partner
Turré Legal Consulting
.signature not found
Actually, the trial is about a block
away from Chinatown... That's where the photo
was taken.. I recognize the bank in the background. It is very much where the trial
is held... And I believe this was taken
on the opening day of the trial...
-- The Funk, The Whole Funk, And Nothing But The Funk
Well, the trial is about presenting evidence
in the form of testimony. Evidence isn't
going to make this or that constitutional or not.
The evidence being entered is focusing more
on the piracy aspect, because that is something
that you can get people on the stand and testify
to. On Friday, an internet backbone expert
and a video digital signal processing expert
testified... Both of them concentrated mostly
on debunking the piracy concerns of the MPAA.
The DSP expert did, however, make a few statements
about how he needed to use DeCSS to get a vast
library QUALITY digital test video for his department's research.
-- The Funk, The Whole Funk, And Nothing But The Funk
The scary thing is that that's exactly what
the DMCA is!!
-- The Funk, The Whole Funk, And Nothing But The Funk
New York City's Chinatown area is a few blocks away from the courthouse.
--
Michael Sims-michael at slashdot.org
I doubt the Norwegian Parliament would give him an award for publishing it if it were illegal!!
Of course, that might still mean it were illegal in the EU, as Norway isn't a member state.
Reverse engineering is, fortunately, completely legal in the EU, although several multinational organizations are lobbying hard for a change. Included in the mix are the recording and film industry's international organizations, such as IFPI, Microsoft and other software firms, and the US government (presumably because they feel that others need to share the misery that is the DMCA). So it might not be too long before we Europeans get a DMCA of our very own to fight :/
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
- 'K' in Men in Black.
This actually has been happening. In an effort to port the DivX ;-) codec to other platforms, a group called openCodex was formed. http://opencodex.com/ (please read ... it's a great site)
;-) http://www.msnbc.com/news/433851.asp saying that a hardware implementation could be in the works.
;-) is not going away ...
Also, MSNBC news wrote an article about DivX
DivX
No more Matrix movies, no more X-Files, no more [insert favorite non-pop group here]. Not that I think losing the DeCSS case would kill the studios--DeCSS should be legal; copyright violation is the offense--but I, for one, would miss a lot of the product produced by Hollywood and Co.
Different people have different tastes. A lot of people like Britney Spears; less people like Elliott Smith. In our culture you can have either. In fact, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that 99.9% of people in this country can get access to the parts of our culture they like for a price they are willing to pay. In that the media giants have been remarkably successful, and I don't question either the profit they have made through this success or the product they produce (Ms. Spears, et al) to maximize this success by pleasing the greatest number of people.
You don't like Independence Day or Jerry Springer? Don't watch them. Don't pay for them. But if something produced by the media moguls does appeal to you, buy/see/rent it. Nobody will like everything they produce and nobody will force you to pay for any of it. I don't see any justification for hoping for the demise of a "Hollywood studios 'culture'" that satisfies the desires of just about everybody in the US and an increasing number of people overseas.
~TomW
In fact, nobody is being forced to do anything in the production, sale or purchase of Britney Spears, N'Sync, Star Wars: Episode 2 or any other product of the entertainment industry that we may or may not enjoy. It's irrelevant how much money everyone involved earns as long as they decide how much they're willing to work for and aren't made to work for less. The issue is copyright, and while DeCSS should be perfectly legal software, copyright is still something worth defending, whether it produces multi-millionaire flavors-of-the-month or not.
~TomW
Having money doesn't necessarily mean you will win, but not having it means you don't even get to fight.
I think that's what he meant. And if you follow the logic, No money = No justice, is where you end up.
--
+&x
In fact, nobody is being forced to do anything in the production, sale or purchase of Britney Spears, N'Sync, Star Wars: Episode 2 or any other product of the entertainment industry that we may or may not enjoy.
Of course not. The problem comes when the people who create such things take legal steps that limit the options to easily find alternatives to mass produced crap. Or curtail the right to view what has been legally purchased.
The motivation that the origianl CEO was talking about is not one of creation, but of promotion. If they see the top end profit margins slipping, it will not be worth the businesmen's time to continue promoting it. It is only by limiting competition and entertainment options that they have been able to sustain continuously growing profits.
Oh, and extending copyright everytime something that has "brand" value to them should have entered the public domain. Think how well the public could be served for TV/film/music media if the copyright expired after 20 years?
Really, think about it for a second. If nothing sparks in your head, think about Gnunapnet alongside all that public domain content. Think about the original purpose of copyright. Copyright is worth defending, but not, IMHO, in its present "crack copy protection, go to jail" incarnation.
--
+&x
Because the entertainment industry is filled with people like the guy who originally said "Artists will have no incentive to create. ". How much do you want to bet that this guy has never created anything in his life?
.sig for an on-topic rant.
;-)
I think the corporate mentality of "there will be no creation without us" is the thing most likely to lead to a stagnation of culture. It's like Edgar Bronfman's example of the decimation of the buffalo as a reason for draconian IP laws. click the
The entertainment industry is filled with liars and cheats, and this is from the mouth of a musician
But that's why it's so entertaining.
--
+&x
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Microsoft at least seems to agree with this now...
I strongly believe that trying to be clever is detrimental to your health. -- Linus Torvalds
Sorry, but I've taken the time to read the DMCA. I've taken the time to read pieces that go over the history of how the DMCA went through legislation. I have read the statements from President Clinton when he signed the DMCA into law that effectively said that this thing will get hammered out in court. I have taken the time to keep up with the lawsuits.
To the best of my ability I have kept myself informed. That gives me a right to an opinion that IMNSHO is as valid as any member of Congress. That is not gall nor audacity.
What? Sonny Bono, musician and actor, had more of a right to an opinion on legislation simply because he was popular and got elected?
Hint, these people get into office because we vote them into office. They pitch a platform and we vote for the people who we think best reflect our opinions on issues we consider important. When we feel they have broken faith on those platforms society in general votes them out. Your assertion that people shouldn't have a dissenting opinion is ignorant and quite frankly bassackwards in the extreme.
The people doing the RE did not originally know that Xing's implementation was faulty. They withheld source to DeCSS in an effort to keep Xing from losing their key and in the end there is still very little info on what measures have been taken against Xing for obviously violating their license agreement with the DVDCCA. And no, the MPAA isn't denying anyone. That is what the DVDCCA does. They control the keys and they control the licensing agreements.
As for your rant regarding linux users, you may say "How elitist!" but I feel equally justified in saying "Too bad." Fair use can, and should, imply interoperability. The DMCA allows for RE to implement this. If a group of linux developers have the initiative and spunk to do it on their own at a time no one else was it is a mistake on the manufacturers part for not exploiting a market. The DVDCCA case in California is a trade secret case btw and the law is clear imo. If you RE a trade secret it is no longer a trade secret. I personally despise the fact that the MPAA is using the DMCA to impose copywrite protections to a trade secret which they do not own. It is pathetic that the MPAA filed this suit. Why aren't they reaming the DVDCCA for not holding up their end of the bargin?
btw, what prevents the Windows and Mac and BeOS and developers from developing their own "free exemption?" It is silly to think this is a linux only thing. The drivers being developed will be of benefit to a variety of other operating systems that would never have had a chance of obtaining closed source drivers from the manufacturer.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
It's just the fact that until recently the market wasn't big enough for anyone to license players for Linux. There are a bunch of people doing that now: LEGALLY.
And, at least in most countries, decss is just one of those ways to do so LEGALLY. Whether or not the USA is one such country is to be determined by the courts, that's the point of what's going on. In most countries there is no equivalent of the DMCA and this is not even an issue.
Support those companies who are developing DVD players for Linux
And at least as importantly, those individuals who are doing so, such as the authors of decss.
How do you know right now that DeCSS is not being used to pirate DVDs?
I have no idea whether it is or not. I also don't know whether someone has the same brand of kitchen knife as I have and right now is using it to stab someone to death, should I be losing any sleep over that?
He may have some interesting things to say, but it looks like he didn't make many
friends on the livid-dev list. Search for his name in the list archives (for example see
here , here , here , or here ).
A lot of really great things have been said about DeCSS here in response to the trial, and I am pleased to see so many people concerned about the outcome and its implications for freedom of information. But there's a lot more going on than this, and a victory in this trial will only be a temporary setback for huge corporate industry at best. The problem is that the DeCSS trial is only one facet of a much larger problem involving massive conglomeration of wealth and resources in the hands of a few greedy corporations, and as long as the majority of thinking people in this country remain apathetic, those corporations will keep coming back to these same points over and over until one day it's decided in their favor. Legal precedent is meaningless if our legislators continually decide to vote in favor of corporation-bootlicking bills like the DMCA. In World War II Germany, perfectly good, nice people did anything they were instructed to do by their government, whether that was to display a picture of Hitler in their house or to turn in their less patriotic neighboors for execution. These are the current faces of America. They are decent people, but they are unwilling to attempt to resist the domination of a greater power. Thus, if we are unable to change the tide of apathy in the US, you can win all the DeCSS trials you want and you'll still be buried under a pile of corporate shit someday soon.
When the took the third amendment, you didn't care because the military didn't like your house anyway.
You're welcome to send other relevant materials or links to openlaw@eon.law.harvard.edu (and browse the archive for more).
-- Openlaw: Fighting for fair use and the public domain
Why 4? It would seem that the logical number is the typical number of tracks on a CD (a dozen or so).
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
If you provided them as links instead of just text, the links would work, regardless of how /. ends up displaying them. Try these:
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi ?dbname=2000_register&docid=00 -14001-filed
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi ?dbname=2000_register&doci d=00-14001-filed.pdf
(Looks like they've been /.'d already.)
_/_
/ v \
(IIGS( Scott Alfter (remove Voyager's hull # to send mail)
\_^_/
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Comparing DVD copy protection to racism
is as dishonest
as comparing intellectual property rights
to one man's sip of water.
And music that was pop a few decades ago can be disemminated by performance - there are songs I heard and learned mostly by hearing friends or cover musicians play them.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I perfectly agree - whatever is legal or illegal is getting quite irrelevant when any 10 y.o. can log into IRC and get all the warez, crackz, mp3z and moviez he wants in a few minuts. He might not be anonymous, but being lost in the middle of a big crowd is already a big protection.
Still, I think every concerned hacker around should help the Freenet project - the Death Star that will make all MPAA and RIAA resistance totally futile and useless.
"If we fail to protect and preserve our intellectual property system, the culture will atrophy."
Wow - how great ! No more Independance Day movies, no more Jerry Springer show, no more Britney spears either... yeah, we would really miss the Hollywood studios "culture"
Also readable via recyclable electrons here.
--
For instance, Metallica has released roughly 12 CD's in the US, but if you searched for them on Napster, you'd be hard pressed to download even 48 distinct songs unless you spend many hours in diligent search. Well... even if you would have done it before the whole Metallica vs. their fans battle. I wasn't able to find 48 distinct songs back then.
--
--
I might have missed something, but isn't that the point of the letter?
REVEALED: DeCSS Led to Competing Linux DVD Player
EFF's defense team landed a surprising blow to the MPAA in Court on Friday when it revealed that the Livid Project has built an open source DVD player for Linux machines using DeCSS. Livid (short for Linux Video) Project leader Matt Pavlovich testified for the defense that his group had been working for months to create a way for Linux users to watch the DVDs they own on the machines that they own. Pavlovich testified that DeCSS was an important step in creating the Linux DVD player and offered to perform an in-court demonstration of his important new innovation. Although the studios' lawyers objected to the Livid player demonstration as "irrelevant," the MPAA conceded they would not contest the existence of the independently created DVD player.
Pavlovich stated the Livid Project's DVD player was created by lawful reverse engineering under the open source development model, which relies upon dozens to thousands of programmers around the globe working collaboratively. DVD players such as Livid's, manufactured independently from DVD-CCA and the MPAA, are not legally required to restrict consumer player features because they are not subject to a CSS license. Through this litigation the studios were hoping to ban DeCSS before independent groups used the code to create consumer-friendly DVD players that could compete with DVD-CCA's monopoly on players.
EFF's defense team will continue on Tuesday to present its witnesses including Chris DiBona, President of the Silicon Valley Linux Users' Group and VA Linux Evangelist. Judge Lewis Kaplan's court is in recess on Monday July 23, 2000. Other witnesses EFF plans to call include Andrew Appel, a Princeton University computer science professor and Michael Einhorn, Columbia University economist. EFF may recall MPAA anti-piracy official Mikail Reider who testified last week against Journalist Emmanuel Goldstein and his publication 2600.com. Carnegie Melon computer science professor Dave Touretzky and Olegario Craig of the University of Massachusetts may also be called to testify in the trial which should end Tuesday or Wednesday of this week.
Transcript of July 21, 2000 trial: http:/ /www.eff.org/IP/Video/MPAA_DVD_cases/20000721_ny_t rial_transcript.html
An index of the DVD updates can be found at: http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/dv d_updates_archive.html
Unfortunately that's a mess Congress prefers to avoid. They'll do it if necessary but they'd rather not. See the following article, for example:
http://www.inside.com/story/Story_Cached/0,2770,6
''At what point should Congress consider legislative action to ensure that there is access to music at a reasonable price with the artist compensated?'' Hatch asked at the end of the session. ''I'm willing to consider compulsory license and a clarification of fair use'' -- the latter presumably including giving tapes to spouses and friends. Asked after the hearing about the Herculean prospect of defining fair use, Leahy blanched and said, ''Now, that's one of the areas where the devil lies in the details.''
Did big tobbaco really lose?
How many Philip Morris "feel good" commercials do you see on television since the hearings/settlements? More than you saw before. My 6 year old, who never heard of Philip Morris before all of this, asked me the other day "Daddy, what do they make?"
----- LoboSoft specializes in Digital Language Lab
IANAL But...
Cases are always heard by the court that has juridiction, so if it is a Federal case, it is heard in Federal court.
The Apellate courts aren't 'higher' per se, they serve a different role. They ensure the proper operation of the trial courts by ruling on whether or not proper court procedures were followed during the trial.
A quick example of this is the MS antitrust trial. Though it will definately go to either the Circuit Court of Appeals and/or the US Supreme Court, those courts will not re-try the case. They will review the testimony and evidence from the original trial and make a determination as to whether the law was properly applied given those facts.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
I can still make music on my own, and expect to be able to regardless of what Time-Warner does.
Oh really? I'd like to agree with you. But the point of your art to express yourself, no? And that means expressing yourself TO OTHERS. The RIAA and the MPAA (if you were a smalltime moviemaker) don't want you to be able to get your material out to fans without going through them. That means giving them a huge cut of the money you'd make, and retooling your work to what they think they can sell. The Internet is a practically cost-free means of distributing information. Napster helps a lot. The DeCSS and RIAA debates are about who gets to control the distribution of YOUR art.
grep -ri 'should work'
I would like to add to this statement. As an independent musician, I, too would love to get paid. Occasionally, I do get paid, but I would do it anyway. Many of my friends actually manage to make a living as musicians, but all of them started out doing other jobs as a means of paying the rent, and did music in their free time.
Exactly how much do people need to get paid for their art? Do you really need hundreds of millions of dollars to continue being creative?
What about people like Britney Spears? She doesn't write, choreograph, or in any other way create her own music or performances. Basically, she is a glorified robot that performs instructions other people have written, and those programmers, so to speak, don't get paid nearly as much for their art as the robot. If you like Britney's songs, you should really be writing a check to the people that actually wrote the damn thing, because they sure as shit don't make a percentage.
GAh! Does anybody out there have the guts to actually accept that they like Britney Spears. Personally, I think that she's a Madonna class performer. But then again, perhaps you all can't appreciate the talent that Madonna has either.
If you want to have a problem with the way performers like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilara, here's my beef:
- They preach about their innocence and 'waiting for marriage' message (which I assume is to assume the role of a good role model), but at the same time, appear on magazine covers and music videos half naked and in very suggestive manner. Talk about mixed signals!
Anyway, I dare everybody to post with their real ID, not as Anonymous Cowards. Don't fear reprisal from The Man (aka Slashdot Employees). Karma is for losers!
Well, except for being locked up in a sweatshop, you're right.
Comparing britney to madonna? My understanding was that Madonna was a dancer with a good voice.Whereas Britney is a good voice that can dance.
That Madonna went to college on a full dance scholarship. I would venture a guess as to say that Madonna came up with and choreographed her own dance moves and videos, while I sincerely doubt the same could be said of Ms. Spears.Yes, Madonna was a straight A student and has oodles of talent. I think that Britney has potential to be more than a fad singer. I see her main drawback would be being stuck with a lame ass producer. I mean, an old producer of her's is already suing her parents and current producer. On the other side (I'm not sure if this is good or bad), she has Disne y backing her.
On reflection, I think that I should have added a *HIPPIE MODE ON* somewhere tag up there. I'll definitely admit to being an idealist, though.
Still, in these comments there is subtext which says, "a true artist will create art even if he doesn't get paid. Anyone else has 'sold out', and is just trying to be The Man."
I didn't intentionally craft my message so as to imply that. It's great if you make a boatload of money off of your art/music/code/craftsmanship, but I do think that it's shallow and callous to pursue a career solely for the money; and it's empty and unfulfilling when you have to accept a job solely for the money. One of the reasons that I really respect Jewel is that during the first (and only) interview I ever saw, one of the fans in the studio asked her how to become famous. Her reply was along the lines of "Fame isn't what matters; if you love your art, then follow it where it leads you." [1]
With that being said, there is a very concrete difference I think that you're missing out on:
We shouldn't expect free food from chefs, free health care from doctors, free programs from programmers, nor do we label them "Sell-outs" or less than "true-professionals" if they expect/require to be paid for their work.
I love to cook. If I'm working at a restaurant and lose my job, I'm still going to whip up my excellent creations in my own kitchen. In that case, I'm cooking because I enjoy doing it. Just because I cook for free doesn't necessarily mean that I'm going to cook for *you* for free. I might cook for you because I want to, or because I like to. But I'm not compelled to.
I'm not asking anyone to work for free. I'm just saying that IMO & IME, the genuine[2] artist has her own reasons for creating her art, and money isn't one of them.
That said, I think that it's beneficial for society as a whole to support (artists, doctors, ...) so that they can (create art, patch people up, ...) instead of wasting their talents working chips at a $FAST_FOOD_HELLHOLE or something similar. [3]
[1]My apologies; I have no exact quote, and it was a long while ago, on MuchMusic Intimate & Interactive.
[2] Genuine: I use this in the sense that Kierkegaard would.
[3] Capitalism isn't always the best vehicle for this - I personally think it sucks, but it seems to be the best solution that's been sucessfully implemented so far.
There is a spellbook here; eat it? [ynq]
If we fail to protect and preserve our intellectual property system, the culture will atrophy. And corporations won't be the only ones hurt. Artists will have no incentive to create.
It's been said before, but I'll say it again: It's a sad fucking day for all of us if artists create their art looking only to the money they'll recieve for it. I don't know about you, but in my mind, the reason we have art is (amongst other reasons) to teach us about the human condition. It's supposed to make a difference in our lives. It's supposed to entertain and enlighten, to give perspective and change how we see the world. The pop-art $hit that's made with an eye towards getting paid sure does a half-assed job of these things - if it even manages that.
I know that artists need to get paid - everyone has to eat - but that's sure as hell not the central focus of those who I'd consider true artists.
There is a spellbook here; eat it? [ynq]
As if MTV, softporn music videos, gun-toting chain-smoking ultraviolent 'hero' movies and an endless string of television series featuring clueless, wealthy, angst-ridden, anorexic women didn't signify that 'culture' in the US has long since passed the point of 'atrophy'...
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
no one's asking you to give up a right. i'm asking someone to explain to me again when production of art became the same activity as production, say, of canned corn.
you can claim, if you'd like, that art is in the same class of production activities as stringing tennis rackets, and from an ownership standpoint, it is. but everyone knows it's not, from an inspiration and incentive standpoint. which is the crux of the statement by the time-warner guy.
don't confuse ownership rights, which i find perfectly reasonable and neccessary, with any statement about the nature of the activity. i'm not stating anything about who owns it once it's around, i'm simply making an observation about why people make it in the first place.
and if you want my guess, it's that the quality of creatively-inspired material available to me in the absence of ownership rights for recorded material wouldn't be greatly different than the quality currently available. might even go up, unless you're a big fan of the backstreet boys.
god is just pretend.
but i think that there are hundreds of bands, unsigned, on mp3.com, for example, who show that what you're saying isn't relevant in terms of whether major-label suing is neccessary for an artist to a) make money or b) make music.
i mean, we have to explain these bands somehow -- take boy kicks girl, a punk rock band from i think maybe san jose who i stumbled across a couple months ago. really good, quality recordings, and they tour and don't have a contract with a major. so why do they do it? how do they do it? will they regret having done it if they don't get rich from it?
so, i mean, sure, i fully support the idea that artists should get paid for their work. i like the idea that people are making enough to make more music. but i think that there are a zillion counterexamples to any assertion that if bands can't get rich, there won't be any bands or any decent recordings. ( i don't think that you made this statement, btw, but i do think that it's part and parcel to the *AA's argument -- they don't care about teeny tiny little bands, thy care about their cash cows -- spears, sisqo, and limp bisquik).
i think that small artists have, can, and will continue to do ok, even if it becomes difficult for them to prevent piracy -- honestly, have small acts *ever* had this facility? if anything, tape trading helps these bands make money.
god is just pretend.
yeah, and this is something that chuck d has been talking about for a while -- if you remove the need to release 12-song albums every 12 months, and allow the artist to determine his release schedule (a song a month, or not, or a full album, just like today -- whatever), you eliminate the phenomenon of album filler. the artist releases what's good, and they do so when it's done, no sooner, no later.
god is just pretend.
i'm down, yo. this is driving me effing nuts, the studios and labels talking all "artists won't have an incentive to create".
for that to be true, the following would have to all be true simultaneously:
1. an artist's only motivation to create would have to be monetary.
2. all possibility of making money from selling their work would have to be eliminated.
3. all possibility of making money from live performance of their work would have to be eliminated.
now, if someone can explain to me how the last two are true and how the first is at all related to the notion of artistic integrity, i'd sure appreciate it.
don't get me wrong -- you should get paid for what you do -- but the endlessly repeated assertion that artists will lose incentive for creating art in the absence of traditional ways to get paid, it shows a complete misunderstanding not only of electronic commerce and what it means, these days, to sell information, how it can be done, etc, but also why artists really make art. sure, they'd like to get paid, but don't most of us do it cause we have to? doesn't the sheer number of starving artists demonstrate that the 'incentive' isn't strictly monetary?
these execs are doing a great job of demonstrating that, amongst media company executive officers, the cultural dark ages have already set in.
moron.
god is just pretend.
that's exactly what i'm talking about. it must have taken years of treating art as a commodity to become calloused enough to make statements such as these.
god is just pretend.
i don't think that that's what i'm saying:
artists should get paid for what they do, and they can even want to get paid.
all that i'm saying is that removing monetary incentives will not kill art. i mean, how many people do you know who play the guitar or write poems or something, and how many of them are famous? i don't think that the culture will suffer at all if, in addition to all of my non-rich non-famous friends, britney spears were all of a sudden non-rich and non-famous. some people would quit, but i assert that this number wouldn't be appreciable enough to induce a cultural dark age.
besides which, even bands that aren't selling cds can make money.
god is just pretend.
no,
i totally agree -- but the fact is, most of the bands on mp3.com have day jobs, and there's no particular proof that a) they'd like to be rich, or that b) they'd stop if they thought they weren't going to be famous. i mean, we could ask them, but you and i both know what they'd say -- no on both accusations.
so, i don't think that we can say for sure what would happen. but we can both agree that their desire to make music probably hinges on something in addition to the desire to make money. that's why they're a punk band. so that's the point that i want to make -- that in the absence of monetary incentive for recorded music (having no effect on monetary incentive for live music, and recognizing that the death of the CD doesn't neccessarily equate to the death of paying the artist for music), even in the absence of that incentive, it's a bit silly to say that we will certainly enter a cultural dark age.
god is just pretend.
Can you clarify? I work downtown, and see those guys all the time, and i even buy the movies when i don't feel like paying 9.50 to see ll cool j in deep blue sea. and you're right -- they're crap.
You're also right that DeCSS won't have anything to say about movies like that -- a digital copy of the digital camcorder footage on those things isn't worth any more than an analog copy.
So but, and i'm being dense here, are you asserting that this means that there's no effect on new movies? This is me genuinely misunderstanding. And do you like those street movie guys, and what they do?
See, I'm torn -- it's a real prisoner's dilemma, one made possible by exactly the underground-ness that you describe. Cause if everybody bought, say, the new Jay-Z on the street, he'd go broke. But everybody doesn't -- they can't, cause they don't all live where you and i live. So when i do it, i know i'm stealing a buck from Jay-Z, who's already wealthy, and 12 bucks from a bunch of jerks i don't want to pay, anyway. And i'm giving *five* bucks to a guy selling cds on the street, who surely has more basic monetary needs issues than any of those guys.
Yeah, it's stealing, i'm ok with that. But do you feel that this type of stealing, the kind that i can participate in cause it takes place on john street with a lookout on b'way and one on church, do you feel like this can ever become an efficient enough system of distribution to actually threaten profits by more than a percent or two?
And to repeat, i know that what i'm doing is illegal and wrong. Shut up unless you've never taped a cd or record off of somebody else, or unless you think i might have bought your cd off the street -- i owe you $2, and tommy matolla $6 -- send me your address and i'll send you a check. I'm asking whether the incremental effect of street sales on already-wealthy artists is having a) no effect, b) some effect, or c) a huge effect on anyone at all, and whether this is ever likely to change.
god is just pretend.
Man, what's your problem? What about amendment #3, the greatest amendment of them all? Do you want to have to provide food and shelter for soldiers? Have you seen how soldiers eat, according to popular television depictions? And, if the film Stripes is to be believed, they're always up at like 5 in the morning and John Candy's one of them. And oh, that mean Sgt. Hulka! What a wacky bunch!
god is just pretend.
a little more eloquent than my point, but basically, right on. all pragmatism aside (no, decss and mp3 will *not* make artists go broke, no, the movie theaters will *not* be closing), i do wonder at the validity of the assumption that people seem to be making: that the quality of music i'll have to enjoy will drop off if all of a sudden the only artists i get to hear are doing it because they like it. seems dubious, unprovable at best, and, at worst, sharply opposed to what common sense tells us about the importance of sincerity and passion in art.
god is just pretend.
Next time I have to fill out an online form asking for personal information, I'm gonna send along an EULA, something like "By receiving this confidential information into your data systems, you agree to X, Y, and Z. You don't have to read this for it to be legal, blah blah." I'm sure you can figure out what X, Y, and Z should be. Use your imagination.
I can't wait till EULAs are upheld. Hey, if I can't reverse engineer their product, the least they can do in return is send me a shiny new $100 on the first of every month!
-- Dave
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
So you're saying that civil disobedience is a terminally flawed idea that should never be used? Where would this country be without people breaking unjust laws? The Civil Rights movement never would have made it anywhere, laws banning the teaching of evolution probably never would have been challenged, hey we wouldn't even have a country. Do you think the American Revolution was legal? Breaking unjust laws is a time honered and effective method of getting them removed. A law that no one follows becomes unenforcable, and that is the idea behind civil disobedience, which is what this is.
"If they are, it's not for the reason you think. Radio stations pay assocations like SOCAN for the right to play music, and that money goes back to the artists. So as an example of artists getting publicity but no money, this is pretty lousy."
That's a facetious argument - someone pays for the original cd from which the mp3 is derived also. The point is that radio like online music distribution takes control of the music out of the direct control of the artist. Once its broadcast over the airwaves you don't know what's going to happen to it - 1 person could be listning or a million people. People could record it and play it later, or share it with thier friends.
All these discussions about music neglect one of the largest music distribution systems - radio. Are there artists who are opposed to being played on the radio for anyone to to listen to for free? Do they have a choice under the current system? How about recording songs off the radio -is this as great an evil as mp3's?
You make it sound as if musicians get to control thier own music - and for some I expect this is true. But realisticaly the recording industry will eventually make there peace with electronic music - and when they do I wonder where all the outraged voices will be then.
Bradley
"Incorrect. This is a specific case of violating trade secrets, which people indeed have been sued and put to jail for. Didn't you follow the Avant! vs. Cadence case a couple of years ago? "
I'm not familiar with that particular case, but how is a trade secret if you never told me - I figured it out on my own?
Bradley
The court of origination is the trier of fact - they decide what happend. Appeal is only for matters of law.
Everyone gets upset when the government censors or manipulates the media. I find it funny that the media is finally manipulating the government.
Speak for yourself, i can very much about losing ANY of those rights.
You can't incite people to riot, and you can't say things which can reasonably be expected to result in the immediate harm of others.
Even if you are inciting a civil war to throw off an oppressive gov't? I know thats not what we're talking about here, but you need to be very careful about making such restrictions.
That's the big picture, and it's obscene.
--Mike--
astroturfing too. Moderate everything down that criticizes them too harshly...
Say no to software patents.
Plenty of pop music is made available on sheet music. Unfortunately, musical notation is quickly becoming outmoded as music often requires certain things that haven't ever been marked down on paper. Whether this music is published and sold, well, that's an entirely different matter.
--
Well that is really not going to be as much of a problem, as time goes on. What will be the problem is, as time goes on, if only authorized people are allowed to make and sell DVD players then the large studios will be able to change the player to only play Holliwood big releases.
I sure as hell cannot state that as a fact, but it does seem to fit nicely.
On the subject of "What's the problem?" What is the problem with just anyone making a DVD player? Wouldn't that make more money for the large studios. It would expand their market to have a more DVD players out there. So what's the problem?
Well?
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
Read it for yourself. Right here.
h tml
http://slashdot.org/articles/00/07/03/2152209.s
I think you will be just as surprised, as people where to see so many horse-less carages, in such a short period of time.
You and I should agree to disagree. I think I have a good idea of where tech will go and what it will do. A feeling. A hunch. But also backed up by a trend that shows no signs of ending.
I'm sure that the Voyager golden disk it doing fine. We just need to carve digital information into someting that does not give it up esily.
I am not inclined to think that Star Trek transporters are coming soon. I'm sure that there are people who think that. That is outlandish and/or a bit crazy. I think these people should hold onto their dreams, though. I do, however, think that man will find a way to write a one and zero on something that will last longer than a cave painting, and soon.
Meanwhile, South Park is still copying and nothing has changed. It's not often that I have to move a file from one disk, tape, or CD, to an other. I've moved my files only about twice, so on the South Park scale I can do that about 1000 times(so far). If I only do this once every five years, I'll be set.
So, you see. My home movies written to DVD will last a while, as will my photos, and copies of the VHS tapes I now own (once I convert them, assuming there is a DVD writer).
The MPAA fears control because they fear the customer. Once you give something out to the public, control if something you can never have. That is a fact. They should never have control over what I do with somethig I purchase, for my own personal use. Will they soon try and chanrge extra if you have more people watching the rented movie? No. If they could they would.
You might be able to get a wide screen TV, but as far as the MPAA is concerned when it comes to using the DVD movie, your rights don't fit in the picture.
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
I wouldn't give up on the legislature just yet. They're more than happy to give up the goodies when nobody is watching (as they did with DMCA). But if you get enough registered voters to care, then the legislators will turn right around (witness Orin Hatch's remarks at the recent Napster hearings.)
You couldn't be more wrong, morally or historically. To follow an unjust law is to commit a moral crime, and the most effective form of protest has throughout history been civil disobedience. Throughout history this has been proven time and time again. The civil rights movement is one of the best examples of this.
They didn't win their rights by taking their seat on the back of the bus!
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
If the US government is abiding by the ideals spelled out in the constitution, there should technically be no reason for a reasonable person to call for a civil war (the US government is not imposed from above, it is of the people, and technically cannot be repressive, since a people cannot repress themselves - the government we have is a direct result of who you voted into office). The provisions of the constitution provide for peaceful change. Incitement to war which directly leads to violence, absence evidence of oppression, would be a criminal act. However, if the situation became such that a great many people are calling for civil war, the constitution has probably become irrelevant, since constitutional government would have been usurped by an illegitimate power.
-Vercingetorix
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
-Me, 7/24/2000
lf.o
You say it's a fact that both a Panasonic DVD player and DeCSS decrypts CSS encrypted DVDs and claim circumvention is a legal conclusion? Are you ignorant on purpose or don't you realize the difference? Panasonic paid for the license to decrypt. DeCSS stole a key and does it without the authorization of the copyright holder. That is very specifically, to the very letter of the law, illegal. Pure and simple. Do you want me to quote to you FROM THE DEFENDENTS OWN EXPERT DEPOSITIONS their admission that DeCSS circumvents CSS and that's it's only purpose?
And I am tired of people who are not lawyers not understanding laws, especially one as simple and direct as this one. I've posted this before but obviously it didn't penetrate into some people's skulls so I'll tear it down # by #.
1) Your first sentence is correct - your second sentence is what YOU think it should be. But it's not and go whine to congress. Currently it's illegal to circumvent CSS no matter what you believe or want to think it should be. DeCSS circumvents CSS - that's exactly what the authors of the program say it does, that's what the defense stipulated to in court that it does, that is what every single expert on the stand has said it does. Please don't continue to pretend to be ignorant to it's true function.
2) Reverse engineering has some very narrow criteria. And perhaps DeCSS meet these. Do you suggest that every single person using DeCSS uses it for the educational value reverse engineering provides. AND you convientently forget that even reverse engineering still does not allow you to simple ignore existing copyright protections. The copyright holder still maintains control over access to his material and no matter HOW you got to the material (unencrypted movie file) the copyright owner STILL owns it and can dictate (like it or not) how and by whom it's accessed. This is not a valid exception and case law supports this.
3) Too bad copying entire movies is not even remotely "fair use" - too bad that no one is using DeCSS to critique a small sample of a movie. Too bad that there is no need to use DeCSS to perform "fair use" and that it could be performed by other means and so fair use is not an excuse for circumvention. AND, even if fair use was the honest intention - that still does not override the prohibition on circumvention. You must learn how to read law.
4) While DeCSS, the source code of that program, is protected as free speech. There is NOTHING in free speech which gives license to violate copyrights. Again, precidence and the preponderence of case law demonstrates this. Do some research instead of regurgitating EFF BS.
5) You sound like an MS hater. This case has nothing to do with antitrust or misuse of copyright and you'll find that neither of those lame defenses was even attempted, even by this lame defense team. Copyright owners are free to decide how their IP is distributed and by whom and how it's viewed. Get a grip - stop pulling terms that don't apply outta yer butt!
sheesh...
Wow - where did you come up with this stuff?? Show me where "fair use" (the single most misunderstood pet phrase thrown into the air but the uneducated) comes into play regarding whether or not your pet OS can view DVDs?
/. readers to spot the obvious (only after their "we want it all for free" *rights* are threatened) for them. What gall. What audacity. You supose to understand the constitution and copyright law better than everyone in congress.
No one is trying to ban speech. This is what the EFF wants you to believe to get you all worked up into supporting their side.
I love how you are judge and jury and supremely more educated than all of congress in your instant pronouncment that the DMCA is guilty of violating the constitution. I'm sure that all of congress is completely ignorant of case law and the constitution and it takes
AND, get your facts right, linux dvd players, according the the livid logs, began before DeCSS - but weren't going anywhere cause they couldn't get around CSS until someone took advantage of a mistake Xing made. Remember, the MPAA isn't denying anyone a way to play DVDs. Sigma Designs applied and received a license to decrypt CSS and is producing a linux DVD player - a legal one. Too bad the guys from livid aren't interested in doing it the legal way. All anyone asked of the linux programmers is that they followed the law and paid for a license, JUST LIKE EVERY SINGLE DVD PLAYER MAKE IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE DOES. WHy do you think linux should get a free exemption? How elitist.!
Every dvd player circumvents CSS - the difference is, dildo breath, that ALL the dvd players in the universe have a license to do so, DeCSS does not. It's not illegal to decrypt CSS if you have a license that says you can - it's illegal to do so when you do not. How pathetically stupid can you possibly be?
And, the US is way way more than 5% of the world. And besides, even if we were, we x% say, No, Fuck You you punks cause we are bigger, better and definately better armed than you so stuff it.
Dude: It's in black and white in the DMCA - circumvention is illegal. Period. CSS performs circumvention. Period. Even the defense experts in this trial readily admit to this. Just because you can copy the file, while it's encrypted, doesn't make it any less illegal. That straw man has nothing to do with the fact that the circumvention itself is what DeCSS does. Period. Why is this such a huge nut to swallow?
Sure, but 80 is really not a very big number. (BTW, why are you backing up and restoring SP 80 times?)
And if there _were_ a problem, in your situation you would probably just try again.
But what if the medium is in a vault, and no-one touches it for years?
Depending on the data format, a single bit-flip could be catastrophic. Try munging a compressed tar archive sometime, then try to recover. Possible, perhaps, but a royal pain.
If you notice something like this at the time you make a copy, you can fix it. A la TCP every second of the day, for example.
But what do you do when the original is gone?
If you have, say, a billion bits, and one goes bad, you have to check a billion bits. If two go bad, you have to pick two out of a billion. If three go bad... You get the idea.
Digital - especially highly compressed digital, like audio, video, etc. - does not degrade nicely. The problem is that although the probability of an error may be very low, the consequences may be great.
"...disks now that will last over 10,000 years" - Under what conditions?
I suppose I'm coming off sounding like a Luddite, but I'm still not convinced digital has solved it's durability problems. But I'd be happy if you could convince me otherwise.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
"Digital formats will last. The medium will change, but things can be copied from disk to disk. The quality will never go down."
Question: How sure can we really be that a digital copy will last? This has been discussed ad infinitum, but I still don't feel like I really know the answer.
The trouble, I think, is that there is no _perfect_ method of copying digital data. A bit might flip. Maybe you notice and try again. Maybe you don't. You can check and recheck and and compare and so on, but this takes time, effort, processor cycles, bandwidth, whatever. So sometimes things get fudged a little.
And what do you compare the copy to? The bitstream it was copied from? How do you know where that came from? How do you verify the original's data integrity? For all you know, you have a perfect copy of an imperfect copy.
You don't notice a scratch on the negative. Instead you get bizarre, perhaps very subtle, digital artifacts.
I suppose I'm being a little off-topic. And I'm not arguing analog copies are as good as digital. I just think that there may be a mistaken notion that digital is _perfect_. And that somewhere down the road, this may make it difficult to identify which information sources most accurately represent the original source.
Maybe not next year, but how about a thousand years from now. We still have original texts _much_ older than that. Is anyone really so confident in our digital system?
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
Ever heard of independent film? That's were we typically don't see the above, it having been replaced with something interesting.
That's a very good point. Although, Indie films are usually too artsy for my taste (just a generalization, I know there are exceptions). I much prefer Indie music, which seems to have a much harder time making a go at it than Indie films. There are always a score of small artsy theatres that show independent and european films that would never make it on the big screen. There doesn't seem to be such a case for indie music, at least on the radio. But I may be biased, since I listen to wber (http://wber.monroe.edu), and they have a hard time going against the larger radio stations in my area who just play the same tired old songs over and over.
Moller
I wasn't really being cynical. I don't recall implying that if the big networks went away that the web would. (maybe I did inadvertantly, and I missed it.)
Do I trust Slashdot? That's an interesting question. I find Slashdot thought-provoking. I don't treat slashdot as a source for mainstream news, I use slashdot as a source for technical information that I am not going to find elsewhere. I also appreciate the (often) candid discussions on topics that occurs on slashdot. As I was typing my post, it occurred to me to mention slashdot, in the context that if we did lost WB, CNN, et al that possibly slashdot's reader base would suddenly explode, since slashdot is already established and has a reliable infrastructure in place.
Why does this sound like an excerpt from an obviousman comic? Well...possibly because Wiley is pretty dead on in his penning of Obvious Man (I'll assume you caught to origins of Obvious man in the past 4 or 5 Sunday comics). I may be cynical, but from where I'm sitting I see the majority of the nation as unthinking media zombies, all clamoring to fit into a mold that has been defined for them instead of making their own mold. But my viewpoint is created from my life experiences, so it's understandable if others don't share this viewpoint with me. I'm certainly not losing any sleep over it.
Moller
the part about independent news sources or the part about having to make decisions for ourselves? I was trying to make a point about the majority of people simply taking what they're fed. I wouldn't be surprised if most of the nation does, as you say:
;-)
:-) Ok, then obviously they're a pillar of proper journalism.
listen to only ABC radio, watch CBS's morning show, watch NBC for news in the evening and go to sleep with Fox's cable news channel.
If I'm wrong in my facts, oh well. Who am I to let facts stand in the way of my attempt at making a point?
Now, with no basis in logic, my opinions. Time isn't bad per se? I can't stand time. It's mindless drivel. My roommate had a subscription to it. It was bad. Newsweek is better. Compared to Time, Newsweek is fantastic. I have honestly never read US News & World Report for news. I only know what they do for their college rankings, which are such a pile of...wait, I shouldn't complain, they ranked my school #1, didn't they?
Moller
oh well is right. I'm just thankful that so far all the engineers I have met have been able to think for themselves.
it wasn't really a flame, as your information is correct.
that's why I like slashdot. open discussion, and I always end up learning something new.
Moller
If you want to have a problem with the way performers like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilara, here's my beef:
- They preach about their innocence and 'waiting for marriage' message (which I assume is to assume the role of a good role model), but at the same time, appear on magazine covers and music videos half naked and in very suggestive manner. Talk about mixed signals!
I'll agree with you there. But I'm also not impressed by their music. It all sounds the same to me, like they have some people locked up in a sweatshop somewhere churning out top 40 hits for britney, christina, and the boy bands. So maybe britney can sing, but I (personally) doubt that she could actually write good music, as opposed to the pre-washed approved music-for-the-masses she does now.
Comparing britney to madonna? My understanding was that Madonna was a dancer with a good voice. That Madonna went to college on a full dance scholarship. I would venture a guess as to say that Madonna came up with and choreographed her own dance moves and videos, while I sincerely doubt the same could be said of Ms. Spears.
Moller
People have lost jobs, sitehosting, reputations, have been branded as criminals, have been sued over INTERNATIONAL borders.
But comparing your ability to watch a movie
This also affects one's ability to make movies. It affects the ability of independents to make movies in popular formats without kissing ass to a group they've never met and may not even wish to do business with for an amount of money better spent finishing their arts education.
Being able to compete in the market is just as important as being able to walk freely. These are different times. No corporation is going to kill a guy for competing. That's too damning. Even without a trial.
With DeCSS it's possible to make a compatible HARDWARE player without licensing CSS from the DVDCCA.
Martin Luther King's struggle cost him his life so that the people he was fighting for would have a chance to do basic, simple things without fear, while being accorded basic human respect.
Same FUCKING case HERE.
Only Johansen is lucky he lives in Norway not in the United Police States of Corporatist America (nothing wrong with money, just wrong with stealing rights to make it independently).
Incorporating for the sake of incorporation is a disease.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Care to back that up buddy?
You ought to read dvd-discuss@eon.law.harvard.edu
more often.
You want to tell me this is the same guy who runs Politechbot.com?
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
I think it's unfortunate that music would only be available as MP3s. It is my understanding that the quality of an MP3 recording varies widely depending on the way it was digitally compressed. True, this signal does not fade over time, but GIGO. Maybe audiophiles are a shrinking minority and the decrease in demand will price turntables out of the hand of most consumers (alas). However, I don't see that happening just yet...many current bands are still releasing material on vinyl. (specifically: shellac) TGL
--- this space intentionally left blank.
I can't belive how stupid these greedy people are. The guy in the article was quoted as saying "artists will have no reason to create" or something like that. Bull Smeg!! The entire argument is basicly that people will stop creating if they aren't payed for it. That is such a crock. I am personally in a band and i've seen about 1 buck 25 from it. I still play. I still write music and I still love it. The music industry is only about the money to the people that don't do music. Nearly all musicians would continue to play, and release music even if they never see a cent from it. Those that do it as a carreer will as well. They will simply make money from touring. All this crap about it putting us into a cultural dark ages is such garbage.
To be honest, I learned nothing new about our legal system from the OJ case. What has surprised me is the fact that big tobacco has been fairing so miserably in court lately. I know its a stretch to make the connection, but big business and deep-pockets can be beaten if people are vocal enough (or if enough people die) to make it politically beneficial for our Reps to be behind the cause.
Your "since I can't make a difference, I won't bother trying" attitude is the reason why big business and special intrests have become so powerful. If you don't like the Democratic or Republican candidates, you don't have to vote for them; vote for a third-party candidate. Sure, you may think that you're throwing your vote away and many will agree with you. But you're not. You're sending a message that you don't like either of the major candidates. And while (your favorite third party here) might not even come close to winning, you're still sending that message. Alone, your one vote might not make much of a difference, but coupled with everyone else who votes for the same candidate, there is greater power.
Look back to the presidential election of 96... A third party candidate (Ross Perot) made a difference. He prevented President Clinton from winning a majority of the popular vote. The message came accross that a good number of Americans weren't satisfied with either Democrats or Republicans. The current governor of Minnessota is a in a third-party. Third parties are not as insignificant as you make them to be.
With your reference to revolutionary ideas, you should also remember that someone had to come up with those ideas and support them. Everyone didn't just wake up one day and collectively realize that slavery is wrong or that women should have equality. Long, tough battles were fought before peoples' minds were changed. This country fought a bitter civil war over slavery. Things didn't change just because time passed. It changed because people got involved and made those changes.
If you want some more reading material about getting involved to make changes, may I suggest a little essay by one Thomas Jefferson called The Declaration of Independence.
This amplies mainly to the USA, but...
Here's the solution: get involved in the government. Its YOUR government, not the MPAA, not the RIAA, not the special intrests. Its YOURS. The reason that these organizations can lobby their own laws into existance is that many of the citizens of this coutry just don't care anymore. A mere half of the voters vote in the Presidential election. Turnout in local elections is in the single digits!
Sitting around and posting Slashdot replies doesn't get anything done. Register to vote if you aren't already. Get out and vote in every election. Read up on the candidates. Write letters (not emails, letters--they look more professional) to your elected officials. Make it known that YOU vote for that official's office and unless he/she supports what you support that you won't vote for him or her. Run for a local office. Most school board positions are uncontested!
Unless you get involved in the government, it will continue to be controled by the special intrests.
I don't mean any disrespect but your music is not what makes the world go around. Fine, you don't make music for money. But many other people do. And it is their RIGHT to make money off of the music they make if people are willing to pay them for it.
I value the music I listen to and I don't mind paying in order to be able to enjoy it. If the money incentive was taken out of music I know I will lose the quality of music that is currently available because many of the artists I care to listen to would not be able to dedicate the time/effort or have the motivation to produce the music they do without the money incentive. Artists will lose a SIGNIFICANT incentive to create.
If you don't believe music is a commodity, refuse to pay for music and DON'T listen to it. You don't have a RIGHT to listen to someone elses production. The productions are offered as part of a contract - if you don't like the terms, don't agree to them. We all do this everyday. I see a Silence of the Lambs DVD for $30 and decide that is not acceptable to me and CHOOSE not to buy it. It's not that hard to do.
Mmmm.. Donuts
It's not about pirating DVDs. It's about free speach, free thought, and freedom from corporate repression. Whenever a Big Company with billions of dollars says "You can't do this", our freedom is being eroded.
What if it was a little guy saying "you can't do this"? How would that make a difference? So if a corporation said "You can't kill a human being", would that be eroding your freedom? Would that be a freedom any reasonable person would support? Just putting restrictions on what you can and cannot do is not wrong, imho. And the fact that it is a big corporation with billions of dollars is completely irrelevant. You're just using imagery to conjure up the image of an evil foe by using metaphors commonly associated with evil.
The MPAA thought police are telling you what to say, what to think, and how to act. Most people are simply *controlled* by the entertainment industry, although most freedom-loving Linux geeks probably don't fall into that category. In a world full of media-controlled conformists, it is the duty of the non-conformists, the geeks, to rebel.
Oh, so if I disagree with you it's because I am controlled by the MPAA? Convenient, isn't it, if you say that anyone who disagrees with you is somehow controlled and everyone who agrees with you is free. I must have been sleeping when they came into my apartment and used those drugs on my head. No, my own independent thoughts on the subject can't be my own thoughts because I disagree with you.
While Dr. King may have given black people the right to drink out of a water fountain, we are giving people the right to *think* without the MPAA's gun to their head. Money can be as damaging as bullets, my friend, and Hollywood has no shortage of cash.
You still have the right to think (although, obviously you're not using it). This has nothing to do with the freedom of thought. Please stop pretending it does.
Note that I'm not saying I believe the MPAA should be able to control music and movies the way they do, I'm just posting against some amazingly fallacious logic I see - that seems to have nothing to do with the case at hand.
Mmmm.. Donuts
I really do believe that the MPAA are fighting the DeCSS case because they are afraid it will allow DVDs to be pirated. The MPAA, etc., evil as many people like to portray them, do not hate Linux and have no reason to exclude Linux players. It's just the fact that until recently the market wasn't big enough for anyone to license players for Linux. There are a bunch of people doing that now: LEGALLY. Support those companies who are developing DVD players for Linux.
How is the MPAA to determine when piracy starts happening? How is it to quantify the loss in $ terms? How do you know right now that DeCSS is not being used to pirate DVDs?
Mmmm.. Donuts
from Ms. Reider's Testimony for the MPAA:
651
2 Q. Can you give me the name of any file swapping utility that
3 you are currently monitoring?
4 A. Sure. IMESL, Gooey, Hotline, ScourNet, FileShare,
5 FileSwap, Freenet.
I am very curious as to how they are monitoring it.....
I read court documents so you dont have to ^_^
Yeah, Declan is well-known and says popular things. But he also backstabs and uses people who are fool enough to trust him.
For the most recent example (that I know), check out this Peacefire press release about Declan plagiarism
Ironically, I told the guy not to deal with Declan. Being proven right was a very sad I-told-you-so.
Or given very long jail sentences.
Here's my DeCSS mirror. Where's yours?
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
I couldn't agree with you more on this point.
This is where I think you are a little off. The issue here is more like me buying a Beta and being unable to transfer it to VHS format so I can play it. Beta players are approved, but Beta->VHS converters are not, even though it allows me to achieve the same end result: watching the movie I paid for! So I only have a VHS player, but cobble together a way to convert my corporate-approved-Beta-distributed-only movie to it. All I'm doing is watching the movie, which I have purchased the right to do.
Sure, the technology could be used to pirate DVD's. Just like "sharp blade" technology could be used to stab someone in the gut. You can't ban a technology just because some bad elements are going to misuse it. If you did, we'd live in a technology-free society.
To me this is a simple question of Fair Use. Fair Use of copyrighted materials allows me to make an archive copy. Happens with software all the time. Fair Use also allows me to do a medium-shift, such as dubbing a CD to cassette to play in my car. That's all this amounts to.
Constitutionally Correct
I see it as the Prisoner's Dilemma, but on a larger scale. Basically, "Screw everybody else, I'm getting what I can, because I can." What hasn't been realized yet is that in the end, everybody gets hurt, too.
In other words, we're all basically greedy and selfish, and sin feels good for a while but has a price.
Constitutionally Correct
I completely agree. Sure, this is a serious issue, but people shouldn't be making exaggerated comparisons just to draw attention. It gets to the point that when you do have something really important to say, you can't make it seem big enough because you've wasted your efforts on something less. You trivialize your future issues as well as the original issue you're drawing the analogy with.
OTOH, maybe they're buying the DVD's just to make this point... I mean, DVD's are a great technology, who wouldn't want to watch movies at ultra-high quality? If I buy into it, I should be able to watch it. We have the technology to do what needs done, and it's not fair that someone is artificially and arbitrarily saying, "No." Maybe in a sense this was a fight that needed to be picked.
Constitutionally Correct
There are many ways you can make a change. Doing nothing isn't one of them. Do something.
If you find the idea of breaking the law to make a point a bit too scary, do some thinking. You'll find that there are many ways you can make a change without even breaking the law.
My favourite recent one in the UK was a protest to campaign against a pro clause 28 campaign in Scotland. Whatever your feelings about clause 28 (a legal clause making it illegal to promote teaching about homosexuality, but so badly worded it has severe repercussions about civil rights in general) this action was a stunning idea. The pro clause 28 people were sending out unstamped postcards getting people to sign up for their campaign (the law has already been passed but there's talk about it being repealed at the moment). The idea was that the campaign would pay for the postage and in exchange get lots of people signing up. But the folks who were unhappy with this pro clause campaign got the address of one of the postcards, and started a counter-campaign, getting anybody who opposed the pro-campaign to send household bricks with the campaign address on them.
The UK post service pretty well has an obligation to post anything with a proper address on it (especially, as I think in this case, the address starts with 'FREEPOST' ). The end result was that the pro campaign had to pay the postage on lots of bricks - cost of sending bricks not being low...and dispose of a lot of bricks. Genius.
So... use your brain...what ever you're passionate about ... do something.
I have never seen a 95 year copyright. From what I understand, it is 75 years after the work or 50 years after the artists death. I think this is reasonable: it insures that the artist and his immediate children are able to profit from the work. And patents are only 17 years!
Traditionally, folk music has referred to traditional musics, the native music of any culture which are played on specialized instruments. This includes aboriginal music, tribal music, any kind of culture-specific music. Stuff that Alan Lomax recorded. Stuff on Smithsonian Folkways. Etc. In the 1960's, Bob Dylan and his ilk co-opted the term "folk" to describe their music but this has nothing to do with folk music; it is pop music. I put the term "traditional" there hopefully to make it clear.
You don't understand the difference between different types of music. There are three fundamental genres of music:
(1) Folk (traditional) music - music which is disseminated by memory/performance
(2) Classical music - music which is disseminated by score
(3) Pop music - music which is disseminated by recording
All three can be recorded, but only (3) depends on recordings. Most music in categories (1) and (3) can NOT be reproduced in score. There are things like "fake books" which try to in some cases, but it is not possible to reproduce fully the nuances of pop and traditional music, where EVERYTHING needed to reproduce a classical piece is (by definition) available on the score (obsolesence of instruments and skills, notwithstanding). Music in genre (1) is by definition constantly changing, and its dissemination is weak, and it usually depends on specialized instruments, and specialized talent.
Composing music certainly does not guarantee its immortality. Even if pop music were composed, it would still be difficult to reproduce. Even instruments of a few decades ago, which are required to reproduce the sound fully which is on record, are often collectors items. Who knows if the instruments which are in pop music today -- such as electric guitar -- will be around in 200 years? Much pop music performance depends on the very things you foresee disappearing. For example, much rap performance depends on turntables. If turntables go away, so do contemporary rap performances!
Clearly, the best way to preserve pop music is to preserve the only thing which can properly disseminate it -- the recording. The short life of digital media is well known and there is much work being done to resolve this.
The former is about maintaining a stranglehold on intellectual property
A right which is guaranteed by the US Constituion, which explictly gives Congress the right to give artists exclusive control over their works for a limited period of time. It sounds like you're interested in pruning the Constitution to fit your own agenda - you're all over freedom of speech, but you neglect the rights of the businesses, which are guaranteed by the Constitution.
restricting freedom of speech (If I can't tell someone, in English or in C, how to bypass a broken encryption scheme, yes, it's restricting freedom of speech)
Incorrect. This is a specific case of violating trade secrets, which people indeed have been sued and put to jail for. Didn't you follow the Avant! vs. Cadence case a couple of years ago?
the removal of rights from a majority of society (the hundreds of millions of consumers who *used* to have "fair use rights" guaranteed by the supreme court) by a minority (the IP providers who can make more money off of restricting content distribution channels, controlling content player manufacturers, and moving even digital data to read-only and pay-per-use systems)
Ah, but you propose to remove the rights from the minority: the big businesses. It's OK to take away rights from the minority? How do you figure?
I'm pretty sure you've confused two of your laws : UCITA, which make click-wrap agreements legally binding, and the DMCA, which makes circumventing access controls to a copyrighted work illegal.
Jeez, and I'm not even an American!
You cannot suppose DeCSS being 20MB in size as the critical part of this program merely is nothing more than a hardware driver. There are no DeCSS-look-a-likes which are 20Mb in size. Then there is another thing: free distribution depends on certain factors: (hardware/software) availability, content support, and (no) restrictions in use.
Bizar technology?
This is hell of a great story, very clear!
Bizar technology?
Well thought out filters. I'd have few songs left, less than 1% of all my mp3s (1500). I don't know a lot of people that use MP3s.... maybe 7. 2 of them have encoded their own cd library and maybe 40 or so songs off Napster. One guy I know, he downloads a bunch off Napster, but doesn't keep that many of them because of HD space, and doesn't buy many CDs at all. Another guy has 2 zip disks full.. those last two guys probably wouldn't buy the cds if that's the only way they could get the money. The other 3 only listen to ones their friends send them and say hey 'listen to this'. I don't know anyone who collects MP3s en masse and who doesn't own at least the same number in real CDs.
finding how many people have a lot of mp3s left after you apply that filter is tough to estimate, but I wonder what it is.
This is very interesting. What I find most interesting is that while 'free software' people are fighting for freedoms, and in this case are fighting against a form of communism (just replace govt with corporation), free software is often seen as a form of communism!
:)
I think this is bigger than we all realise, and if you studied it in depth you would find the seeds of a new form of government forming, with the best of capitalism and communism bound together.
I mean, lets face it, communism looks best on paper but doesnt work in practise. Capitilism looks bad on paper but works in practise to varying degrees. It is only when people's freedoms are stomped on by mega-corps that this model falls flat on its face.
What we are talking about here is a form of capitalism, but one where money can be best made not by hiding behind lawyers but by actually having the best product/support.
This is simplistic at best, but it would be interesting to study and document this phenom, where people are fighting for the freedom to give away software that provide solutions not otherwise offered. A truly open marketplace, where only those corporations who constantly reinvent themselves (by providing the best 'solution')and do not rest on their laurels hiding behind stupid laws will survive.
Sounds like the utopia of the perfect capitalism/communism mesh to me
Simon
Simon
The real linux_penguin has Slashdot ID 101961. Anyone else is an impostor. Including Bruce Perens.
Bravo! I'm speachless.
And even the ability to spread things over regions is already a moot point. How many DVD players are sold with big huge stickers on them saying "region coding disabled!"? And what percentage of DVD players sold are these, especially outside of America? I seem to recall seeing a mention somewhere that region coding is even illegal by international treaty or some such. (Can anyone confirm or deny this?)
-RickHunter
DMCP outlaws devices designed to thwart copyright protection. This was not meant to outlaw VCR's and other devices that enable fair use copying and use. It was meant to make clear the illegality of machines that facilitate PUBLICATION. There is a large difference between fair use and publication. DeCSS is frimly in the fair use catagory as it can not be used on it's own to publish DVDs.
This law is obviously poorly written. Taking Kaplan's view, we might outlaw FTP, record buttons on VCRs, and anything else that he might decide has a possible illegitimate use.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
In the music world, think of every pop 'artist' ever. The Backstreet Boys were manufactured. And to use the argument that "pop art is not art, real art is..." is just ignoring the fact that art is whatever the public/media wants it to be. There is no such thing as certain art being more "real" than other art. It can be better than other art (entirely subjectively, I might add), but art is art, good or bad.
You want exposure? You better be able to position yourself for an audience. Yes, even on napster (etc...)
You want to starve? Keep up the "art is not a commodity" ideal.
Art = canned corn. Maybe that was the whole point of Warhols soup cans... to show that relationship.
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
Jumping to Conclusions.
Absolutely!
It seems to me that the slashdot crowd would be very familiar with inferior products being pushed into the consumers hands with very expensive ad campaigns.
Wonderful synopsis of "the importance of sincerity and passion in art." After all, art is only a physical extension of the passion within its originator as well as withing its audience.
--\ din..
"If you love making model airplanes, and just feel compelled to do it in your soul, are you going to quit your job and start making model airplanes every day? No way...In the end, it's always a matter of economics."
How I pity the would be model maker, and how bitter those tears will be on his deathbed; realizing life has passed him by, and with nary a model made.
Seek out what fulfills you in life, if you find something that you love to do, that you feel compelled to do, do it, do it well. Cling to your aspirations, dirk has no idea what he's talking about.
More on topic, you'll find that in every profession, every trade, a person who loves what they do makes a superior product, provides a superior service, it is that simple.
I would rather everyone be an artist than a robot, and am not arguing against the ability of everyone to learn to do a certain task, but a person who is fulfilled in their duty, day in and day out, who sees their work as art, those are artists. It has been covered here before, in many terms, is code beautiful? -- art? Yes, to the artist that created it. And a perfectly restored porsche 356, is that art? Again, ask the artist who spent 11 years toiling on his creation, to him the answer is simple.
Forget what preconcieved notions you may have, forget chasing paychecks for fifty years, forget the big house, the luxury sedans, remember who you really are, and what really makes you happy; recover the artist you lost so long ago trying to chase other peoples dreams, start chasing your own.
--\ din..
"And corporations won't be the only ones hurt. Artists will have no incentive to create."
Well, if we got lucky, maybe Metallica would get out of the business. At one point they were an excellent band. Then after the black album, they were in it for money and started sucking. Then they go and shave their heads, and suck even more... Maybe what we need is some of the artists to get out of the "money" business, and back into the music business.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
Why do people keep claiming that Freenet is some kind of unstoppable service, spouting off meaningless phrases like "The Genie is out of the bottle" and other sayings emphasizing how no one can do anything about them. There's a very easy way to get rid of Freenet -- make it illegal to use, illegal to operate. That's what the Napster decision implies.
First, let me say that I'm no big fan of the MPAA's stand on this issue. I think it'll come back and bite them in the ass. Kind of like IBM and DOS. But, I digress... Consider this. If, as some in this forum have expressed a desire for, the MPAA and the conglomerates were to disappear tomorrow. Yes, there would be some interesting and good things to come from that. On the other hand, who would make the big movies that we all love (at least on occassion). What independant out there would have the money to make a 100 million dollar Terminator or a 75 million dollar X-Men, or even a 25 million dollar "independant" film? Blair Witch you say? Sure, they shot it for almost nothing. If the big boys weren't there to shell out millions for distribution and advertising, who would have seen it? Sanchez's homies, yo, that's who. I for one don't want to be stuck watching crappily made home movies shot with handicams on my 19" computer screen forever. The theatre experience is worth the price of admission (pardon the pun). Home theatre can only go so far. It's the MPAA and the studios that keep the theatres in business. Does the system need examined and changed? Yes. Is the MPAA shortsighted and totally off base with the DeCSS case? Absolutely. Is the solution to just throw out the MPAA and the studios? I think not. There must be a better solution.
The flamebait is the American justice system, and it richly earned its flaming here.
What is the robbing of a bank, compared to the founding of a bank? -- Bertolt Brecht
So, are you going to take a gun and shoot the judge? If not, at what point would you? When exactly does your gun ever become useful? And if history came to a crossroads in the U.S., and you did indeed took out your guns to fight the evil government, exactly how long do you think you'll last against a Cobra gunship? Great idea for the 1780's, but useless now.
You pretty much got it at the last. Guerrila warfare in any meaningful sense in a developed nation consists of a data war, games played in politics, courts, and media. Guns wouldn't last long against GPS, armor, perfect communications, satellite monitors and immense databases crammed with info about everyone (eventually). And wait til monitor camera kiosks start popping up everywhere. A Glock and a couple of streetsweepers mean didley against a nation where the private cops outnumber the municipal and the military bases are omnipresent. The dream of the lone warrior dies hard, though.
The quality of the videos isn't like that in all cases.
Many of those copies are made by the projectionists --
Thus, it may be lower quality, but it isn't a video recorder that has been smuggled in..
I know 60 Minutes has something on this a while ago, but don't assume
that what they showed then holds true now.
So unless you or someone else on the net wants to go and prove that the majority of them are like that *now*, please think about it before you post.
-- What doesn't kill you hasn't tried hard enough.
Unless their ethics and the laws coincide :)
From the parts that I actualy paid attention to, the defense claimed that the police lied and planted evidence. The jury believed this.
Now that half the LA Police department is under investigation for lying, planting evidence and killing people, the defense doesn't seem all that improbable.
All of the people who had made up their minds about his guilt are still convinced, and the police scandal doesn't seem to have registered.
To drag this nonsense out just a little further, I stopped believing reports about police investigations about ten years ago when Boston had the famous "silver gun killer" case.
This is a rough description but it's pretty close. A man and his wife had just gotten into their car. The man was shot in the shoulder and his wife was killed. He claimed that a black man with a silver gun did the shooting.
Lo and behold, the Boston police arrested a black man and came up with seventeen witnesses that said that he owned a silver gun and used to wave it around in restaurants.
After the autopsy determined that there was no way that the shot that killed the woman could have come from outside of the car, the seventeen or so witnesses explained that they had been threatened with loss of welfare checks, criminal prosecution, and offered various deals in order to get their testimony.
If the police had been a little smarter, they probably would have claimed that the defendent was lying underneath the car and fired upward through the floorboard.
I don't think OJ was innocent. I think I do not know.
When you are dancing with wolves, never limp
no offense, but I know what I mean. In my opinion, CD is non-violent or it is not civil disobedience, it's "direct action" against the governement. Passive resistance is one of the components of civil disobedience, it describes how you respond to an arresting or expelling authority.
And even given your def. of CD, I have to ask again how supportive you are of blockading abortion clinics? It's a legitimate act of CD, but does that mean we should tolerate it?
Personlly, I feel that the "blockading" portion of the question speaks for itself. The purpose of those actions is not merely to protest, it is to physically prevent people from gaining access to health clinics which perform abortions. Just as sidewalk protesters do not merey be visable or audible, but activly stand in women's way and try to intimidate them. I know people who have done escort duty at Planned Parenthood when operation rescue was in town, and I do not consider their tactics CD.
Whether you "tolerate" or even support them depends entirely on to what extent you agree or disagree with the assumptions driving them.
On a clarifying note, if my state legislature ever gets around to passing the buffer zone law here, abortion right oponents will get a chance to practice CD by simply being (non-violently) inside the buffer zone. But I don't think that would suit their goals. CD is useless to them, because everyone knows how they feel and how strongly they feel about it. Their strategy seems to be to indimidate, not to change minds. IMHO intimidation is not a CD accomplishable objective.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
but I don't live in America.
Tell that to Jon Johansen.
--
--
Things are only impossible until they are not.
Trouble is, America has a long history of shitting on common sense. Folks cutting themselves on knives and potato peelers and suing (for god's sake!)? Folks sueing tobacco companies (like the smokers only realised recently that it was bad for them)? Folks complaining about what their kids see on TV (if you're that worried, switch it off!)? All brought on by an out-of-control legal system of ambulance-chasers after their moment of glory (and their huge wallets), and screw anyone who gets in the way. And the juries who establish damages aren't any better - they're all after their 15 minutes of fame, so they set ridiculous penalties to ensure they get on the news.
In the UK, we look at the news and say, "It could only happen in America" whenever this sort of shit goes down. It's not racist - you entirely justify all that.
Grab.
Although it did not come out in court today, the Norwegian parliament has also issued the young teen a formal apology for the treatment he has undergone as a result of publishing the code.
DMCA is a US-law. The focus is on the US-courts... But what is the status of DeCSS in EU?
Is it legal? Or not?
Bjarne
I think Jon is going to turn out okay. He did get an apology from the Norweigian government, and then did give he some kind of award. His program on the other hand.... -- Real men understand acronyms instinctively.
but is there away to make our voices heard?
Spread it on Freenet. They can't take it down that way.
1. The person selling them is on the other side. If you want to take me at my word, I can vouch for this by saying that I work around the corner from this, and I see the pirated tapes being sold there every day, and Goldstein is not the person I see selling them.
2. See above.
3. Yes, I can confirm it was him, as I was at the trial that day, as were many others.
I think you mean Mozart.
"There is no shot you can take that I cannot simply deny." - Ertai, wizard goalie
snip:
"You may not agree with the law or its interpretation, but that's no excuse for breaking it! If you disagree that badly then there are perfectly legal means to protest which are a lot more effective in the long run. This case certainly proves that point."
I couldnot disagree more. When a citizen beleives a law to be wrong, immoral, or unethical, he/she is not only obligated to speak out against it, but I believe he/she is obligated to break it. (Civil Disobedience).
Ever read Henry Thoreau?
"If a Law is unjust, a just man belongs in jail"
-- A Human Being is nothing more than mobile CO2 factory. Bow to the plants.
No matter what the ruling turns out to be, you will still be able to find DeCSS Everywhere. It cant be stopped now, it's too late.
The problem will be the precedence that this ruling will set for software that *isnt* as easy to keep distributing as DeCSS. If DeCSS happened to have say 20MB of source, how many people would still be distributing it so freely? Bandwidth and many other factors are important to people when they are showing their "civil disobedience".
I think that we should set up a site somewhere out of the US that holds all this type of software... oh wait, one is already being set up in ?Sealand? (can't remember the name) Yet who knows how much it would cost to store a 20MB program that lets you view "unauthorized" images/videos/text/etc...
I just hope this ruling is in DeCSS's favor, not for the sake of DeCSS, but all the software that will be banned after it.
int rant()
{
Why does people like MPAA/RIAA and whatever **AA still try to hold on to the oxymoronic DMCA? It's the DIGITAL MILLENIUM from Chrissake! Copyright is DEAD!
For a few short decades, when the so-called "intellectual property" can only be produced by factories, artists (sic) make more money than they deserved. But the artists are not the only problem : it's the marketeers and recording studios and the managers etc who made obscene amount of money off the artists. I don't believe they (artists, managers and the lot) deserved the kind of money they make. 50M for some stupid jingle? Come on!
(Cut to oft-quoted inflated price of CDs, and the oft-quoted costs of "promotion").
So the internet came, saw, conquered. The 'intellectual property' is now back to what it really is : plain old information. Communication technology has rendered the artificially inflated business model of the "artists" obsolete.
With legislation like "DMCA", the recording/movie industry "fights back" by making the act of using modern technology illegal. Which is stupid : once the technology is there, people will use it. Legislation or not.
Now, I hear people(mostly the **AA types) saying that this "threaten" the livelihood of artists and the industry blah blah blah and it is unprecedented. The fact is that the software making industry has already long been "threatened"! Does the software industry collapse under incessant piracy?! Is Microsoft still around?!
So, win or lose, the DMCA is obsolete the first day it was made into law. And people will know eventually. Instead the **AA types should consider instead :
(a) Change the business model. Make the originals worth a lot more than copies. How? Putting in goodies. Maybe the artists' signature. Or improved packaging. Or (even better) some special offer off for the next guy's concert. Or a million other things. The caveat is that the industry has to put in more effort. But for the money they earned : they SHOULD.
(b) Lower prices. They already make inflated amount of money. I don't believe they deserve it. Technology will level the playing field.
Instead, the **AA types put money into lawyers (using the money that CONSUMERS has paid them of course) to betray the consumers.
Rant Over; return(0);}
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
Subject:
0 721_ny_trial_transcript.html
[CAFE-News] REVEALED: DeCSS Led to Competing Linux DVD Player
Date:
Mon, 24 Jul 2000 00:58:38 -0700
From:
"Robin Gross"
Reply-To:
cafe-news-owner@eff.org
To:
, ,
EFF DVD Update: July 21, 2000
Universal City Studios v. 2600 Magazine
REVEALED: DeCSS Led to Competing Linux DVD Player
EFF's defense team landed a surprising blow to the MPAA in Court on Friday when it revealed
that the Livid Project has built an open source DVD player for Linux machines using DeCSS.
Livid (short for Linux Video) Project leader Matt Pavlovich testified for the defense that his
group had been working for months to create a way for Linux users to watch the DVDs they own
on the machines that they own. Pavlovich testified that DeCSS was an important step in
creating the Linux DVD player and offered to perform an in-court demonstration of his
important new innovation. Although the studios' lawyers objected to the Livid player
demonstration as "irrelevant," the MPAA conceded they would not contest the existence of the
independently created DVD player.
Pavlovich stated the Livid Project's DVD player was created by lawful reverse engineering
under the open source development model, which relies upon dozens to thousands of programmers
around the globe working collaboratively. DVD players such as Livid's, manufactured
independently from DVD-CCA and the MPAA, are not legally required to restrict consumer player
features because they are not subject to a CSS license. Through this litigation the studios
were hoping to ban DeCSS before independent groups used the code to create consumer-friendly
DVD players that could compete with DVD-CCA's monopoly on players.
EFF's defense team will continue on Tuesday to present its witnesses including Chris DiBona,
President of the Silicon Valley Linux Users' Group and VA Linux Evangelist. Judge Lewis
Kaplan's court is in recess on Monday July 23, 2000. Other witnesses EFF plans to call
include Andrew Appel, a Princeton University computer science professor and Michael Einhorn,
Columbia University economist. EFF may recall MPAA anti-piracy official Mikail Reider who
testified last week against Journalist Emmanuel Goldstein and his publication 2600.com.
Carnegie Melon computer science professor Dave Touretzky and Olegario Craig of the University
of Massachusetts may also be called to testify in the trial which should end Tuesday or
Wednesday of this week.
Transcript of July 21, 2000 trial:
http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/MPAA_DVD_cases/2000
For crying out loud folks, you are supporting an illegal action, this is no different from napster (which I don't support either.)
If the DVD cracks out there could actualy be used for somthing good (sure, yah, right, for making indepentend movies, LOL, considering that there isn't even a DVD write standard yet which works on regular DVD players, thats a load of bull!) instead of just copying off movies then I wouldn't complain.
Granted, I think that the public needs to have access to all codecs and should be able to do create whatever they want (in fact my strongest belief is in that of freedom of information) but watching the latest POS movie from hollywood hardly falls under the first admendment
(especialy if you didn't pay for that movie!)
The proper course of action would have been for the Linux commmunity to gather a large number of signitures (and if they couldn't manage this then it must not be wanted all that much!) to encourage the MPAA to release a closed source (ooh, evil evil word!) DVD player and recorder. Granted, closed source may not be the nicest system and all, but it would have been better then all of this legal manuvering.
As it is, I agree that the licening fee's for DVD movie recording is outragus, but do you really think that some company wouldn't have released a free DVD recorder after a DVD-Writable standard came out? Come on, the huge market possabilities! Even if it had some limitations on it (splash screen at the start of the movie) the product would have come, even if the MPAA yelled their respective bloated heads off at it. What this whole entire DVD crack thing has done is actualy band the movie and DVD player companies together to create an even stronger anti-free speach system (an example being the recall of Sony PS2's which could play DVD's of any region).
What it comes down to is that by advertising DVD's weaknesses the linux (and computing community as a whole) has done nothing else but REDUCE their chances of letting varius DVD issues slip under the MPAA's noise.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
they said that without this property right, we would have no incentive to produce the great output that we have produced
they said that we put great wealth and effort into obtaining this property right, and so therefore we are entitled to it
they said that the great economic wealth of america rests on this property right,
but one thing must be said. slavery was still wrong - because it wasn't about property but about controll.
they said that slavery would last forever, but 2 million people died proving otherwise.
yes, nobody could have possibly immagined that the consequences could be so violent, but nobody had ever experienced the war with the new technologies of the industrial revolution either.
did they understand the consequences of their actions??
did people really believe enough in "those" property rights to kill for them??
Dude, the EFF is paying for the defense attorney. Of course their report is positive!
Law is whatever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained. -- Aaron Burr
As to being too cynical, I'll fully admit that I'm way too cynical for my age; maybe there's something about engineering and sciences that pulls the shrouds away from our eyes, that lets us see through the crap that is modern media and what passes for culture.
Oh well.
Just because the big networks would "go away", doesn't mean that the Web has to...
Do you trust Slashdot? Its not a "major" network, it has a tiny staff that does a small amount of field reporting compared to the networks, and 95% of its news is delivered from untested sources. And yet we trust it because they've developed a reputation of having reliable news.
So, we lose WB, CNN, and (MS)NBC, BMG and Columbia House. But if there's one thing that the Internet (should have) taught us, its that distributed sources can work just as well as a few monopolistic ones. Buy your music from smaller labels! Watch more independant films, or anime, or whatver. MTV wont be shoveling "hipness" at us, but then again, who put them in the position to tell us whats cool or not? The world will go on, as it has before.
Hmm... why does this sound like an excerpt from an Obviousman comic?
Rosa Parks was *NOT* a criminal.
I've noticed the spaces in URLs on /. quite a bit recently. I thought there were just a lot of incredibly bad typists on /., or it was some strange inside-joke of the Trolls. Why is it that Slashdot inserts spaces in URLs?
Refrag
I have a website. It's about Macs.
If I removed all of those MP3s from my computer I'd only have a handful left. Kraftwerk's Tour de France would be one of them, because I've tried in vain for several years to find a copy on CD. Right now, I'm stuck with a horrible sounding MP3.
Refrag
I have a website. It's about Macs.
Oh wait, I just re-read your post, and Kraftwerk's Tour de France wouldn't be on my computer either, because I own their Autobahn CD.
So, I believe that I would have no MP3s left if I removed all of the ones you told me to.
If a band provided me with an ISO image of a CD of theirs, I would probably be able to justify giving them $5 for the music. That would be a lot more profit per CD than they get now.
Refrag
I have a website. It's about Macs.
"And where big corps go to court... the biggest wallet always wins."
Maybe Erin Brockovich could win it for us?
joel
Such is the infinite Grace of Popeye.
Van Gogh lived and died poor. That didn't stop him from painting. Any artist knows that lack of money is not a reason to keep yourself from doing what you want to do.
joel
ps-and if you get tired of starving...there's always advertising.
Such is the infinite Grace of Popeye.
i dont buy my stereo components from ex-cons
i dont buy my pizza from dominos
i dont buy my toys from mattel
i dont buy anything microsoft says, let alone make
and, im just not interested in paying big media to help them fight against the rights i used to have
---
No, I think this proves the point perfectly.  According to the MPAA, copying a copyrighted work (even a poor copy) is theft of intellectual property and should be punished.  The fact that these idiots are selling the copied material is a larger infraction IMNSHO than if I shared a copy with a friend for free even though the opportunity cost to the MPAA is the same. 
If the MPAA is going to go after DeCSS, then they need to go after the dork on the street selling first run movies with the same tenacity.
How hard is it to make that a link? Same page as a link. And the lines occur on page 652. (Insert rant about no anchors in the text here.)
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Although right after the real quote, there's an interesting typo...
21 THE COURT: I am ruling on relevance. There has been
22 no clam here.
I guess they don't like seafood...
(Also, to be complete, Slashdot gets mentioned once more on page 720.)
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Hell, why were lynchings ever investigated by the FBI? My GOD, people thought they were an A-OK way to settle perceived greivences.
Mob mentality has gotten lot's of people in trouble.. like Germany (who recently paid out billions to those who were bonded in the 30s and 40s). It was popular!
And if you claim that these analogies are not relevant.. just remember that it was popularity that brought about these atrocities. And popularity as an argument must be weighed in terms of these atrocities.
There needs to be a way to say "I bought this album because of MP3" when you go to the record store.
*sigh*
--Perianwyr Stormcrow
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
The biggest problem with any cryptosystem is at either end. Any cryptosystem assumes that both the sender and the receiver can be trusted, because the system is useless unless someone encrypts the stuff on one end and decrypts it on the other.
With secure DVDs, the untrusted individual is the receiver, who, despite the untrusted nature of himself and his equipment, requires the means to decrypt the information to make use of it! So, all you need is a player that's a bit... out of kilter... (witness the proliferation of DVD players that ignore region encoding) and the jig is up.
--Perianwyr Stormcrow
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Item number one would have removed ALL my cds... I usually buy something I like. If I DID have an mp3 on my hard drive that I do not own a cd of.. I apparently dont like the mp3 very much and I was too lazy to delete the thing. (also note,... a big deal of my mp3s.. Ive actually CREATED from the cds I have.. so I can keep a copy of my music at home while the actual cds are at work or in my car)
Luke
you must mean soul I usually wear out my soles pretty quickly and would be happy to give the whole shoe to the MPAA in exchange for a good movie *flips to the University movie channel* hey, Interview with the Vampire is on...
Ah...relying on handouts. What a wonderful way to make a living.
It's not about handouts. It's about giving consumers the right to decide the price of music not some record label guy. It's about taking the power away from the abusive corporations and putting it in the hands of consumers and artists.
Matt.
Matt
We could always create a system like this...
It's already been created. Check out Fairtunes. A web service that allows you to send money directly to the artist. The artist can then decide on the distribution of your funds NOT the record company.
Matt.
Just a thought, wouldn't this post make /. liable in the same manner that 2600 was for having links to sights containing the DeCSS code ;) Kinda makes you think where all this might end.
And the guys who threw the tea in the harbor should have been hung.
Civil disobedience is as american as apple pie, and it gets a heck of a lot more attention than any "legal means" of protest. If bad laws are not broken, no one will realize they are bad.
----
Hmmm, what I find sad is that very little will stop your average Joe from buying DVD's or supporting groups like Time Warner. Whilst most of the /. community is opposed to what they are trying to do here, it appears that the average US citizen doesn't give a damn. Otherwise movies would not be such a huge business, and there would not be such huge profits made. Face it, America, this is what you have become: a mediocracy. It's sad to think that the mainly crap movies that Hollywood churn out is your culture. But there it is, and I don't think you can do anything about it, "they" are too rich and don't live by their consience. Prove me wrong /.ers, please
Well there are laws to deal with those things. The information that was being shared wasn't restricted by copy rights. MG
Randomly distributing Karma whenever possible.
For one thing, we wouldn't be losing most of the newspapers in the country, and, more importantly, we wouldn't lose the courts. There would suddenly be a huge vacuum in the news biz, and a big incentive for up-and-comers to get their stories straight.
What if, in the absence of any media conglomerates, in a world of thousands of independent media and news stations, companies and outlets, we were still bombarded with tv's and movies that basically amounted to watching people more attractive than us make out with other people more attractive that us, and complain about the difficulties of being attractive and popular?
Ever heard of independent film? That's were we typically don't see the above, it having been replaced with something interesting.
You make a good point, though. I think if the media corporations disappeared, Mr. and Mrs. USA would be seriously disoriented when their pabulum levels dropped suddenly.
--- Submission is feudal.
this case is about being able to play DVD's!!! the MPAA is not going after people who have cdr's and can make full copies of a dvd (bit for bit without using DeCSS). the MPAA is persuing this case because it infringes of their control over dvd players. i don't know how this even got to trial because CSS is not copyright protection!!!
"Whatever the courts decide in the short term, it will eventually be obvious that there is no way to regulate widespread copying in an electronic information society. The technology can't be stopped; consumer preference for videotape over laser disks means, bluntly, that people want to copy."
And later:
"The only solution is to accept instantaneous dissemination as a fact of electronic life. The creators of a movie, a musical composition, or a computer program will come to recognize only two stages of its existence - absolute private ownership during development, and absolute public ownership at the moment of release. The dividing line will be sharply defined, and the creator will receive all of his compensation when he crosses it."
And the conclusion:
"It is by no means clear how these legal issues will be resolved. But it seems inevitable that our ideas of ownership and copying of information will undergo radical revision in the coming years. Because they have to."
Earlier in the book he clearly describes what is wrong with people like Time Warner's president:
"Change means stress. Change makes us uncomfortable and fearful. ... There's a fundamental truth here: human beings don't like change."
17 years ago someone saw this mess coming. Today, the people in charge still don't have a clue.
I really do think there is a connection between what is going on in the MPAA-2600 case and Eldred v Reno.
Disney and Warner were big backers of both bills in 1998 and gave lots of campaign contributions to everyone they could think of, both Democrats and Republicans.
I believe they were very scared of the Internet and the new freedom of everyone to publish. They wanted to be able to control the Internet and keep it safe for e-commerce and pay-TV and their profit stream using a business model of licensing and staged releases.
In each case, I believe Congress went too far. They didn't realize what they were up against--us! Not only do we understand the Constitution and our rights, we are also the citizens and consumers. When we get mad, they eventually suffer and have to back down.
We can fight in the courts. But I don't think a boycott would be sufficient. What we need to do is encourage all citizens to publish their ideas themselves instead of relying on the television networks or Hollywood or Microsoft. We have to help them with the tools and access. We don't need lots of money to do this because the costs of publishing are so low now.
Turn off the television. Buy only used books and not from Amazon. Use your computer to write programs and produce your own art and share it. Help Project Gutenberg and other programs to share information.
Sooner or later the big companies will realize the only way they can respond is by providing the customer with a good product at a fair price. They can't lock up ideas like DeCSS forever. But they are desperately trying.
You can help support my case to overturn the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act with your own ideas. Visit http://eon.law.harvard.edu/eldredvreno and add your own ideas to the Open Law discussion. Written briefs in the appeal are now being filed and oral arguments will be in October in Washington, D.C. And, please visit my site and read anything you like for free. You own most of it--in the public domain for as long as we have it.
Haydn (an even weirder spelling, also correct) enjoyed the benifits of the patronage system to the fullest.
Leadbelly, like most great folk singers, had a pretty hard life.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Inciting a riot and fighting a war are two different things. Rioters do not overthrow governments very often... They just break things and hurt people while less-involved people take advantage of the distraction by looting.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Sorry. I take IP law pretty seriously, but this is nothing compared to the fight against racism.
No matter how this case shakes out, there will still be geeks, artists, and greedy corporations, all playing the same roles. Nobody has ever been lynched or murdered over DVD copy protection. Families have not been broken up by it. Lives are not in danger.
I strongly urge you to push yourself away from the monitor, go for a walk outside, and get things in perspective a little.
I'm not just flaming you here, I'm serious. The DeCSS case is important, but it is not something to start a war over, or even contact Amnesty International about. It's just a trial (one of many) that tests a recent law... one which will probably be radically revised before long.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Then I guess I'm not. I don't think you are free to commit libel, or slander, or start riots, or use a megaphone outside my bedroom window at 3:00 AM, or reprint 10,000 copies of John Grisham's new novel and sell them, or mass-produce bootlegs of MS-Office.
FYI, the Constitution of the United States is on my side, not yours.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
The conflict that we see here is a forerunner of the nearest future's enormous clashes between the Corporate Republic and the Virtual Republic (Civilization: Call To Power's terms). The mighty Time-Warner tries to crush the feeble 2600. However Time-Warner forgets that 2600 does not consist merely of individuals; it is a physical facade which is backed by literally the millions of Internet users out there (and especially ./ geeks :-). The Internet expands the people's consciousness accross vast distances and huge cultural differences. Time-Warner is definetly facing an opponent much tougher that they thought it would be. Their only chance is the US's current orientation as a corporate country. We'll se how it helps them.
There's noone out there that disagrees that copying and distributing DVDs is illegal, and if you do, you need a morality check.
Does that go for mp3s as well? I definatly agree that copying DVDs and selling them is not the most moral action. However, giving your friend a copy of your DVD is considered fair use by some people. I still buy cd's. I don't buy many, but I never did before napster. I try to buy cd's containing the music I like.
Anyway your missing the point. The point is we should organize a formal protest, DeCSS would probally be best since we all agree with it and thats what this trial is about.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
I'd definatly be for some kind of organized civil disobediance, but how do we effectively organize it? Just copying DVDs and putting DeCSS mirrors is a start, but we need to do more than that. Perhaps we should send letters to Time Warner and friends with thousands of signatures stating that we all committed some agreed upon act that any rational human being would consider fair use. Just a crazy idea.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
And the guys who threw the tea in the harbor should have been hung.
That's not a 1/2 bad idea (not the hanging part). Anyone who did it would undoubtly get in a load of trouble but it would certainly cause a stir of a bunch of people dumped crates of DVD players into Boston Harbor >:-)
"We were half way to Rivendell when the drugs began to take hold."
-- Hunter S. Tolkien
Not YET. Picture this: in their never-ending war against copying, the media honchos (software included) instruct their spin doctors to spew the following propaganda:
"This so-called 'free-software movement' is nothing but an incentive to piracy. People who are enticed by their rhetoric, download their software, and read their political manifestoes start believing copying software (and copying in general indeed) is good. They'll start being more sympathetic to piracy. They'll refrain from denouncing other pirates. They'll have a moral excuse to pirate themselves if their 'Gnu' alternative doesn't perform so well. After all, we're just a greedy immoral mob, aren't we?
"Therefore, we urge for the criminalization of the so-called 'free-software movement' and immediate prosecution of their leaders, for incitation to crime.
"While we're at it, let's prosecute all those 'free software' companies for dumping. They're releasing competing products at zero price for chrissake!"
So there you have it. Let's fight it BEFORE they get too cozy with the idea.
"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman
I've been thinking about the comparison with disobedience against racism for a while, and I think the supposed difference is a crock.
I met Rosa Parks at a college seminar over a decade ago. Someone asked her if she was thinking about taking on the system when she sat down on the bus. She said, simply, "no, I was tired after a long day at work, and needed a place to sit. The back of the bus was full. I thought that it was stupid not to sit in the front." Civil disobedience followed -- afterwards -- because people saw that it was stupid to have a law that prevented black people from sitting in the front.
DeCSS is essentially the same case. One (bright) kid wanted to play a DVD he had purchased, and thought a law against doing that was stupid. Thus his father's comments on taking on the Nazis, etc.
Again, the issue is the same. Race laws were a load of bull, designed to protect the interests of a few, by telling others what they couldn't do. DCMA is a load of bull, designed to protect the interests of a few, by telling others what they can't do.
In both cases, a bunch of irrational prejudice is piled on top to confuse the issue and make it seem like what you're told not to do is something you shouldn't do -- even though it's obvious you should be able to sit down, or watch a DVD.
Jews are subhuman monsters that will eat your children. Black people are stupid and dirty, and we can't sit next to them. Movies are owned by the people who make them, the industry should decide how and when you see them, and the whole world would collapse if we let kids in Norway learn how to watch them on their Linux boxes.
All the same load of bull, all for the same purpose, to stop people from doing what is possible and sensible -- because it treatens what someone else wants.
All a matter of power. Period.
>>everyone involved knows for a fact that the defendant is innocent the conviction rate in moot court is about the same as it is in real courts, the prosecution wins about 90% of the
cases.
Yes, and isn't it an American tragedy that all these budding lawyers must then spend years in moot prison? After all, a lawyer is a terrible thing to waste.
Surely there is a formal term for the huge logical error you make above.
While I know that most peoples response to this will be 'It's the priciple of it', I have to say that the court case is somewhat insignificant. It's far, far too late for the MPAA to be trying to stop DeCSS and no matter what the court rules there will be millions of off-shore copies outside their control.
-- If it's stupid but works, it isn't stupid.
Possibly a brave stance to make. Thank you for being so honest and for putting your name to it. In some ways I do agree with parts of your stance.
However, I do disagree that we all (ought to) abide by a set of laws, which are effectively to be held absolute until repealed by due process.
Basically because _we_, internationally, as a global community of well informed (better informed than many of the people who are involved with the judgement making, I'd wager) thinkers are covered by many different, admittedly widely overlapping, laws. They aren't really absolute after all. I'm glad I live in a reasonably forward thinking country in this regard (translation - I agree with all of the laws of which I am aware)
FatPhil
Hmm, who say something along the lines of "Immoral laws _must_ be broken"?
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Some artists will have no incentive to create. I think the loss of that type of artist would be a small price to pay. If someone invented a Star Trek computer that could solve any problem if asked nicely, I (as a programmer) would probably be out of a job. But I'd think that computer was the coolest thing in the world, and I would test its (and my) limits on it for free. Heck, I'd probably pay.
___
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
I think he hits the nail on the head.
Not being able to play Star Wars on my Linux box is not on the same plane as Martin Luther King fighting for the right to drink from the same water fountain as a white person.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
OK, I'm being glib, and I wish Corley, Garbus et al all the best against the MPAA, but I don't live in America. I have the DeCSS code, the DOD speed ripper, the DivX codec etc. and I'll give them to anybody who asks for them.
And I promise that if the case is lost I'm going to put them on Gnutella, Scour and (if I can get it working) FreeNet.
So up yours MPAA.
Point taken, My bad.
It's pretty obvious that these are pirated copies, considering if you look at the boxes they are movies still in theaters (Mission Impossible 2, etc.)
Sleep: A completely inadequate substitute for caffeine.
(slightly off topic) Rather than flaming, why not tell me how you view history as being? Even though I do mix up time periods a bit, the factual information about how the Catholic church came to power is correct. The point is that knowledge is power, and whoever has that power can do whatever they want. This is bad in the hands of a few, but good in the hands of many. Our society allows people to make a lot of money dealing with information. We have the internet, which is a means to put any information in the hands of anyone that can access a computer. On the other hand, when it comes to entertainment, we have had a situation similar to the situation with the Catholic church in the past. We have a few people that control most of our entertainment via TV, Movies, Music, etc. If people see that entertainment industry can make a lot of money in this way, what's to stop some other industry to do the same? Imagine if you bought a Ford car, then as per your licensing agreement with Ford, you can not do any work on it yourself. YOu can only drive on Ford certified roads. You have to let Ford do all the service to your vehicle. You are not allowed to put a new stereo in without their permission, and should they find that you went and did something as audacious as changing your own oil then told a friend how, you are a criminal and need to go to jail! How dare you take away Ford's potential income by changing the oil yourself? It's all relative. DVD's should not be under control of the MPAA after I pay for it. Once I pay for it, I should be able to use it to wipe my ass, play frisbee, show it to friends, watch it on linux, or whatever I want to do with it within respectable legal limits.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
the Plaintiffs "choice" of which URL to download DeCSS from as an example:
http://home.rmci.net/bert/fuckthelawyers
hahahaha
seriously, if this case was going on when DeCSS was first released..did you think they would have mentioned zdnet as a download site??! Because it was...
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
Has anyone looked at what the MPAA thinks of the whole thing? Their arguments sound reasonable, they doubtless get a lot of media coverage, etc., ad nauseam.
Anyone feel up to doing a point-by-point rebuttal? Or know where a good place to send it would be?
Internet Explorer was unable to link to the Web page you requested. The page might use standard HTML or CSS.
It was my understanding that DeCSS was made available on 2600 as both part of a journalistic story and so that Linux users could have a way to view DVDs on their machines. What's so wrong with that? I see nothing wrong with freedom of information, and I certainly see nothing wrong with someone searching for a resource that would allow them to use a product that they've already spent a good chunk of change on.
Okay, for those who are willing, how about this: Since the program seems to be the problem, and the program is meant to allow you to view DVDs on your Linux machines, then not wanting you to have the program must mean that the MPAA doesn't want you to use DVDs. Why not send any qualifying DVDs, along with receipts, if you have them, to the courthouse. I'm sure the address can be found somewhere. Send them overnight and with a return receipt requested, along with a letter respectfully requesting of the attorneys that they see to it their clients purchase the DVDs from you for the orginal price you paid plus any sales taxes. After all, if they're not willing to allow customers the right to seek a method that would allow them to view the DVDs, then they must not be very interested in your business. Of course, normally you would send a product back to the manufacturer, but they're not the ones in court.
That's just my $0.02.
You can buy pop sheet music, but the vast majority of it will be hideously inaccurate, and certainly not as notated by the original artist/author. The sheet music publishing industry has its demons, just as much as the recording industry does.
---
"Life. Don't talk to me about life."
"If you like Britney's songs, you should really be writing a check to the people that actually wrote the damn thing, because they sure as shit don't make a percentage."
You bet they make a percentage. The writer (and publisher, though that's another story) - not the recording artist - gets paid every time a tune hits the radio. You pay by listening to the advertising on the radio that enables the station to pay its licensing fees to ASCAP/BMI/SESAC and eventually the artist.
Nevertheless, you don't have the luxury of choice here. You don't, individually, decide what gets airtime. You pay for the Britney song just the same as you pay for the song when you listen to the radio, whether you want to or not.
In the case of visual art, broadcast is close to the end of the chain, rather than the beginning. The very end is, of course, product - like videotapes or dvd's. Why? Because at the point that product is distributed, no more compensation is expected ["Once they have their own copy, they will no longer wish to use ours (broadcast, advertising supported)"]
Thus all the blather and fuss over copies of end product.
---
"Life. Don't talk to me about life."
There's really only one way to make them take us seriously. Stop watching movies released by the Big Seven. Yeah, that's just about all new movies. But they won't care until they feel the squeeze. Sure, all the new movies are "cool", but you're supporting an industry that treats you like crap. I won't be watching any more new movies put out by the seven companies represented by the MPAA until they change their stance, and I hope others will join with me in this. Your rights aren't worth anything unless you stand up for them. Your Quadell
Don't blame me; I voted for CowboyNeal.
Whatever the court decision, we'll win.
I mean, if all of this is forbidden, then as most of the required substace is already available, it will not even be hours before it is spread over Internet.
After this, there will be some months (maybe less) before a free open alternative appears.
Just take a look backwards to 8hz-mp3 that was forbidden but so widely distributed that the market had to do with it.
Later, Blade appeared.
This is starting to look like the same thing for DVD playback (and especially with QNX coming for free with a port of the Xing player).
Today, DeCSS sounds like some illegal stuff, tomorrow some geniusses will just compute something smart, elegant and law-proof to replace it.
Just hope they will resist the temptation to get some millions not to release it.
--
Trolling using another account since 2005.
What if I say, "Screw my privacy rights, let's put a webcam everywhere in my life," right now? Does that mean that you suddenly are required to do so? No.
Just because one person wants to give up a right, doesn't mean that the rest of us have to. If you want to live in a commune, or undergo alien experiments, or have Carnivore read your email doesn't mean that everyone should jump in with you.
And, for the folks who want to create for a living, what the heck is so bad about wanting to put a roof over your head and simultaneously avoid the deep fat fryer burns on your forearms from your shift at KFC? Starving artists are very romantic notions, but they don't exactly put out a lot of second CDs.
I think that people always know how to find the commercial versions, though that edition for $1 is a deal. (Keep in mind that Civil Disobedience was more an essay than a book, so it's gotta be cheaper).
Remember the story about Michaelangelo? The Pope (at the time) kept rushing him to finish the Sistine Chapel, so Michaelangelo painted the Pope on the ceiling and put devil horns on him. Do you think he was worried about compensation? He wanted to do it his way, and probably could have been put in prison for that stunt (most likely without pay).
luckman
luckman
I don't involve myself with flames, much less know how to bait one.
Personally, I am offended that Time-Warner thinks that their copyrights are the backbone of our culture. I say the backbone of our culture is exactly what they are trying to prevent the spread of... art.
luckman
luckman
I don't involve myself with flames, much less know how to bait one.
>> or sitting at the front of the bus.
Or refusing to obey an unjust order.
It is a civic responsibility to disobey unjust laws. ("Civil disobedience.) Part of the reponsibility also involves doing the punishment. If you are willing to take the punishment, it makes more of a statement.
You could be right. Logically, this would suggest that DiVX should be banned. However, I feel that the movie studios don't want these banned on the basis that they might become useful. It will require some clever arguing and probably some outright lieing to demonstrate that DeCSS is used for the creation of DiVX's but this isn't nything that the MPAA has had problems with.
She works for Apple support, the number is 1-800-s0s-appl (that's s-zero-s)
He who controls the past controls the future.He who controls the present controls the past. -George Orwell,1984,1948
...or perhaps more appropriately, making salt from seawater, without license from (or was it in defiance of the monopoly of?) your British colonial masters...
^C + ^V is not informative. Moderators, you may all lick mah balls.
1. There is no definitive proof that DeCSS was used to make them. People are distributing DivXes made with footage people taped with camcorders they sneek into the theaters. Barring DeCSS won't stop that. 2. Compressing a DVD movie down to the size required to fit on 1 or 2 CDs involves a substantial hit in the quality of the video and audio, not to mention no one makes money off trading the DivXes. Sure you can now download the movie over the net. But it's like making a copy of a copy, a compression of a compression only gets worse.
As a Linux user and GPL advocate, I'm behind the defense all the way, but I do see the case the industry is trying to make, even if I don't agree. The repurcussions of this will affect not only the movie and information technology industries, but most likely the future of things such as the GPL, which rely heavily on the sort of backwards engineering-ethic that, to me, at least, seems to be in play in this case.
Ideally, I'd like to see the industry open up and stop guarding their secrets in such a strong-armed manner. There are other ways to turn a profit, that, as a bonus, will endear one to their consumer base more. But I still hesitate to point a direct finger of blame; the issue is too complex. All in my oh-so-very humble opinion, naturally.
Sean Daugherty "I have walked in Eternity -- and Eternity weeps."
DeCSS has enough publicity that it'll be mirrored anywhere any everywhere US law does not look or have influence. And people will use it.
Will you cry any tears for the poor movie actors and cinematographers and editors etc. etc. if you went and paid exorborant prices for a DVD and a device to play them, but had to use an illegal piece of software to view the DVD you had already paid for?
Now that our rights our being trampled left and right, I can only hope that the few other Slashdot readers who have seen that this was coming will join me in doing something about it.
If DeCSS is illegal, how much longer will it be until any piece of software which big companies dislike will go the same way? Will M$-friendly congressmen ban Open Source? Will Linux become the domain of outlaws and freedom fighters?
And how much longer until *all* our rights are sacrified for corporate profitiabilty? Jon Katz is, as usual, right on the mark: you are no longer in control of your own life! The CEOs are deciding not only what you will see and what you will hear, but now what you will think!
While America and the rest of the world, sleeps, who will stand for freedom against the corporate republic? When the laws are corrupt, what meaning is there in following them? I encourage everyone to take a stand for democracy, for freedom, and take on the MPAA and RIAA.
-- Floyd
-- Floyd
this is not about the restriction of thought or speech.
It is *only* about free speech. "Free" means "absoulutely free". You can't put conditions on absolutes. If are for restrictions, of *any* kind, than you are *not* for Free Speech, end of story.
s about the restriction of certain pieces of speech, mutually agreed to by the creator and the pacakger
More likely, "agreed" to in a lopsided contract which leaves artists out to dry after the corporate machines bleed them dry. Such contracts might be legal, but are never moral. And like RMS, I prefer to follow my sense of ethics, rather than the laws, even if no one else is capable of doing so.
-- Floyd
-- Floyd
The actual links of interest are
c gi?dbname=2000_register&docid=00-14001-fil ed or
c gi?dbname=2000_register&docid=00-14001-fil ed.pdf
/. insists on inserting blanks in the URLs. Remove them.)
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.
(Stupid
Not that I imply that gpo.gov should be trusted more than goatse.cx.
--
And nowadays he would live long and die rich, thanks to copyright protection.
--
I think /. inserts spaces in any long string, or something like that.
--
Work fine for me. Pity, I was going to make myself an "I slashdotted the gpo.gov!" T-shirt.
--
Even those of Britney Spears.
...free (c) CCC
Some excellent comments followed my thoughts, and so perhaps you'll appreciate my followup.
:)
1) One person thought I made a poor example with Beethoven, since he died a pauper. That wasn't my point. As I read it, the original post expressed the opinion that we needed "higher-tech" ways of storing music (read: digital & electronic), and we needed to move away from these archaic "physical" constructs (read: vinyl records, tapes, CDs, etc). CDs die, break, and the player technology is lost. With digital, it's forever. Well, as time has shown, that's not the case. The best means of preserving music for *very* long times is with the most mundane of physical things - the written score. As for higher-tech digital sotrage, I can't readily read my doc's from my Atari ST from my freshman year in college. Why should I expect to easily listen to MP3's 10 years from now?
Put simply, higher tech is not always better for archiving than lower tech.
2) Someone else commented about my lack of recognition of the different types of music and how they are distributed. That seems like an unnecessary distinction. We listen to music in the same ways: classical is broadcast and on CDs, like pop. Pop is heard at concerts, like classical. The core of a classical score is more readily expressed in written form, but as someone commented about it being hard to express the strange sounds and effects used in todays pop, the same is true of new and old classical. Classical music is strongly dependent on the interpretation of the musicians, something that is not readily written down. Also, the volumes and speeds of the instruments is not generally strongly indicated on the music (unless you were to take the time to write it in dB & beats/sec for each and every player, as well as giving a precise map of their positions, and an acoustal analysis of the stage. I'm not being facetious - audiophiles care about this stuff!) And that's not even considering the modern classical stuff that does use unusual instruments & timing (e.g. John Cage)
As for how music is disseminted - pop music is spread by memory/playing (e.g. the cover bands, and every high school garage band that's ever played) The same comments could be made about the other types of music.
Finally, about Beethoven being poor - that's exactly the attitude I get from a variety of posters in these discussions.
Metallica, I mean, Beethoven, should give his music away for free, and besides, no one should be that rich (at least not richer than me).
Besides, had Beethoven been smart, he would have made money from his concerts and T-Shirts, and horse-carriage bumper stickers.
ShoutingMan.com
Wait a minute now, what does "removal of rights from a minority of society by an ignorant majority" mean?
You had just claimed that Banning DeCSS wasn't about "the right to watch a movie", and then equated it "the right to get a drink of water".
The two are rather different. "Movies" aren't something that the government owns. They don't throw you in jail for watching a DVD on Linux because the government mandated that Linux users can't watch DVDs. The government (or public community in the segregation case) mandated that colored people could not use water fountains.
There's a world of difference between those two.
Let me give you a better analogy. Ford designs a car that uses regular tires. Chevy cars can use those regular tires and some other really fancy tires, called "Super Tires" that they designed and own the IP rights to. Well, before you know it, "Super Tires" have become the standard due to their great performance, and Chevy can still use both types of tires, but only offers support for standard tires. Ford still hasn't come up with a way of using "Super Tires" since noone at Ford wants to shell out the cash to buy usage rights on Chevy's "Super Tires", and Ford doesn't really want to implement anything but standard tires anyway. Meanwhile, the public are demanding that Ford implement "Super Tires" by complaining to the Government, Ford, and Chevy in various ways.
Now, what is *your* view?
1. The government should step in and:
a. Require Chevy to give Ford the usage rights even though Chevy is trying to sell them those rights, and Ford doesn't even want to implement "Super Tires".
b. Require Ford to implement "Super Tires" and pay Chevy the cash.
c. Require Chevy to drop "Super Tires" and go back to standard tires.
d. Require Ford and Chevy to meet and hammer out a deal for a new type of tire.
2. The government should just stay the hell out of the situation and see which company comes out on top, then watch as Ford dies and new companies buy "Super Tires" usage rights and implement even better features of their own, eventually setting their own standard and competing heavily with Chevy.
3. I'm too sophmoric of a person to handle this question, I'll just go with what the majority opinion is and check Slashdot to see what other people are saying.
If you picked #3, You'd love Sheepdot.
"...2 Norway, and in February I received an award, a national
..Just goes to show that the people who are engaging in these 'pirate' actions are usually enthusiasts that are spending large amounts on music, movies, etc.. As we all know, this is not about piracy, this is about absolute control over the marketplace.. As someone who produces 'cultural content' I don't like this idea at all -I don't trust Sony or anyother large corporation to protect my 'content' in my best interest - better to have it out there, enjoyed, and creating interest in what I create.
3 student award which is awarded to students who are in high
4 school and have achieved excellent grades and also achieved
5 something outside of school in culture, sports, art.
6 Q. Why did you receive that award?
7 A. I believe I received the prize because of my part in the
8 writing DeCSS.
9 Q. Did you get a prize?
10 A. Yes, I did.
11 Q. Did you get any money?
12 A. I received about $2,000.
13 Q. What did you do with the money?
14 A. I used $1200 and bought a high-end Sony DVD player for my
15 TV."
Wow! is this a prime example of how the MPAA are shooting themselves in the foot or what?
--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
Vices - what I lack in originality, I make up for in volume.
No, the real reason was inability to select impartial jury. Come on, anyone reasonable realized that this cop had nothing to do with "framing" OJ. This jury was going to set him free no matter what.
You argue it out in lower courts first so that issues will be discussed, boiled-down, thought-out, drug-out, pondered, and turned inside-out... thus giving higher courts one or more succinct issues to decide.
Think about this:
:P
During the Vietnam war era, America had Conscription. Now im not too sure here but from what i can recall, selection was based on your date of birth. If you refused to go to Vietnam on behalf of your country when you were selected, you broke the law.
40 or so years down the track, no-one consides the draft dodgers to have committed a 'crime'
Now apply to DeCSS hosting.
Janie took my gun...
Yes, but the statement from Time-Warner could be compared to saying that if they stopped the PGA tour, people would stop playing golf, or if they stopped tennis tournaments people would stop playing tennis. Some would stop playing these sports if they could no longer make a living off of it, but they won't die, we won't go into a recreational dark ages.
But even more than that, at least in my opinion the desire to create is what makes someone an artist - not their past creations, not their marketability or their worth in dollars. If someone loses the desire to create because they aren't getting paid, maybe they were never true artists in the first place.
I have to agree with you on this. Copyrights are a good thing. But as the saying goes, all good things in moderation. Since copyright was first instituted in this country in 1790, the production of just about everything has increased and change has happened at a more and more rapid pace. These changes are not the result of copyright. They are the result of many people building on the ideas of others. The areas where change was greatest and fastest were the areas where patents and copyrights held the least sway.
We need to repeal the last couple of copyright extensions and go back to a much shorter term. 28 years is still a long time to profit from a creation. Patents get less than that today, and should probably get less still in some cases (and the patent system is a whole other argument). I don't think we'd see any shortage of new works if copyright terms were shortened. No, the studios and publishers would scream bloody murder about it, but in the end, they've been the one's trying to screw the rest of us over in the name of "the poor authors." Copyright is a deal between the public and the authors. The public has been getting the shaft for years though. That needs to change.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Rebels in Afghanistan were taking out Russian helicopters without modern weapons. Had they been better armed, they could have put up a much better fight still. I would assume that the guns come out after the government pulls its guns out. By doing that, it has declared war on at least a group of its citizens. They should have the ability to fight back. There will always be those who don't want to be involved, and will go along with any outcome, but the rest should not have to suffer under a tyrannical government. History seems to show that virtually all governments that last for any good length of time eventually get to such a point. I think that's one of the reasons that the founders of this country wanted us to have the right to keep and bear arms. Of course they probably didn't forsee such advances as nuclear weapons, Cobra gunships, F-117 Stealth Fighters, etc. But those weapons will probably not be suited to the sort of conflict that would result. It would mostly be a war of information, with guerillas that only fight when forced to. They would probably much rather run and continue to wage an information war to unseat the government.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
It doesn't have to be tolerated, and in most instances, CD is not tolerated. Witness the events in Seattle recently. But the demonstrations do get attention and that is what those people want. They may get arrested, tear gassed, shot with rubber bullets, or in some cases shot with real bullets or severely beaten. This is the risk they take to get attention for their views.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
The truth is, copyright was limited in effectiveness to the time in our history between the invention of mass publishing and the time that mass publishing became so cheap anybody could do it.
He's right, you know. Copyright was created in response to the invention of the printing press. The English government (a monarchy at the time) needed a way to control what was printed. Censorship was the original intent of copyright. Later, in 1710 with the Statute of Anne it was changed to reflect new goals, namely that of ensuring that the publishing industry could prosper while not giving them complete or perpetual control.
The statute was challenged later, several times in fact, by the publishers. They hoped to regain the perpetual ownership rights that they had before the Statute of Anne came along. They failed in every attempt. The US used the Statute of Anne as a guideline for our own copyright as it's described in the Constitution and as it was originally made into law in 1790. It granted a 14 year term, renewable for 14 more years, just as the Statute of Anne granted English publishers and authors.
Since copyright originally came about because mass copying became much easier, so should a new method be created now. The problem, as always, is still the publishers. They are still pursuing the goal of complete and perpetual control. This is not in the artist's interest, and it is certainly not in the interests of the vast majority of the citizens of this country. There is supposed to be a balance struck between providing the incentive for creators to create and paying back the people of this country for their granting of a limited monopoly to the creator by adding the work to the public domain once its term has expired. I believe that that balance was completely destroyed about 24 years ago with the Copyright Act of 1976 which extended the copyright term to life+50. That meant that copyrighted materials would probably not fall into the public domain until at least a few generations after they were created. A minimum of 50 years, but conceivably much longer. This throws the whole arrangement out of whack and (through the publishing industry's whining of "It's for the poor authors.") has created a sense in the American public that authors weren't being rewarded for their work, when, in fact, prior to the extension, author's were protected for up to 56 years. That's a very long time to have a monopoly on the publishing of a creative work. The term has since been extended to life+70 years, or 95 years for "works for hire," (i.e. anything created by a corporation). I suppose the 95 years would apply to most music now since the record industry got music created while under contract to a record company declared a "work for hire."
Read the background material in the Eldred v. Reno case to get a better explanation than I could provide here.
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/eldredvreno/
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
In a way, that's an understandable tactic. All you have to do is prove possible bias, demonstrate the trial was swayed by something other than evidence, and you can walk out on appeal. It's the same stunt Microsoft tried in the Anti-Trust suit.
However, that isn't "justice". That's trying to win by default. And trials are not supposed to be about "winning" or "losing", they're supposed to be an impartial examination of a situation, to ensure fairness and accountability.
Far from using the actual DATA that the defendents possess to show the reality of things, the defendents are being sold up the river by their own lawyers, who seem more interested in a pyrric victory that can generate lots of publicity for themselves than a fair decision that reflects the reality of DeCSS.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
If one of the Slash hackers could add a special over-ride switch for postings of exceptional value to the readers, PLEASE do. There aren't many posts that deserve to flout the +5/-2 range, but this is definitely one of them.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Well, sometimes the majority is wrong. If the majority was always right we'd all be married to Harrison Ford or Jennifer Aniston.
The evolution of an idea from a minority opinion to a majority opinion can start with small protests. It's the best way.
Wordnik, a dictionary project which aims to collect
You mean M- M-w C-y, don't you?
Jamie McCarthy
Jamie McCarthy
jamie.mccarthy.vg
"And corporations won't be the only ones hurt. Artists will have no incentive to create."
Artist don't only create to get paid that create to express themselves to see if they can capture the public's eye this has nothing to with the artist but the corporations.
Yep. And you're the one assaulting it. You are the one who shoves crap like the Backstreet Boys on us. You are the uncivilized cretin, Mr. Parsons. The sooner your kind die, the sooner real culture can thrive. I won't miss you at all.
If we fail to protect and preserve our intellectual property system, the culture will atrophy. And corporations won't be the only ones hurt. Artists will have no incentive to create.
Mr. Parsons, consider yourself to have met an artist with the incentive to create no matter what monetary rewards (or lack thereof) are present. Perhaps your world, where so-called "artists" are in it for the money, would perish; but this would definitely be a boon to civilization. We can do without Britany Spears.
Worst-case scenario: The country will end up in a sort of cultural Dark Ages."
It already is and you are to blame. I've seen the sort of garbage that Warner produces and I can tell you that it is responsible for all the cultural decay you see around you now. You are a fool, Mr. Parsons.
For those of us in the United States, at least.
This seems to me to be exactly the kind of "laying down the basic framework" type thing that would be best served by an amendment to the constitution. Maybe stick some reasonable privacy stuff in there as well.
Passing a law would only lead to years and years of lawsuits until the law is confirmed or shot down by the Supreme Court.
Jon
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
There are too many goddamn awful bands anyway; the world would not miss the majority of them. And I'd much rather listen to music made by people that do it because they enjoy it, than to people who are doing it just because they think it might make them rich.
Do you really think music would disappear if that lure of fabulous rock-star wealth disappeared? I don't. There has always been music. There haven't always been copyright laws, record companies and multit-million dollar recording contracts. But people made music anyway because they wanted to.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
As another noted, my dislike and prior experience with Declan colored my interpretation of the photograph and the message it was sending. mae culpa.
2. Posting a link to a photo of Declan's in a comment means that he "enjoys a rapport with slashdot"?!
I should have been more specific. I was not referring to you personally, or the photo in particular. Rather the photo (and my misinterpretatino of it) were the catalyst to expound on Declan's lack of journalistic ethics and the seemingly high (perhaps now cooled to medium based on the "olde tyme hacker" article) he appears to be held in by at least some editors at slashdot. I refer to previous slashdot articles, particularly those posted during the time when livid was under attack and developers were being forced through legal thuggary to withdraw from the project, largely because of Declan's irresponsible journalism. At that same time this was happening numerous articles of his were posted, with slashdot intros of the sort saying (paraphrased) "Declan has another interesting look at X" or "Declan McCullagh of Wired covered Y." Most other stories are not introduced with the author's name, but rather "an article at [publication]." In fact, the only author I'm aware of that enjoys such regular billing on slashdot, by name, is Jon Katz (apologies to Mr. Katz for mentioning his name in the same breath as Mr. McCullagh).
This implies rather strongly some kind of rapport or relationship between Declan and slashdot, which, if true, reflects poorly on slashdot.
I point that out as criticism because
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Its not treating Art as a Commodity to want to get paid. While I work with professional artists on a regular basis, this is not my main job. Hell, most of the time I am working with these folks, it is because I am getting to work with the people I consider heros in my life...I took my last vacation to work two weeks unpaid on a friends album, so obviously it ain't about getting paid for me either.
/.ers know what kinda expense it take to make an album (or a movie or software or anything that can be put in a downloadable form thus must be free). If ya wanna be purely idealistic, quit yer corporate jobs, move to country and start up a geek community. If ya wanna try to live idealisticly but know that ya have to throw in a little realism, keep yer day jobs and know that Art doesn't have to be a commodity, but it sure helps at times (and doesn't necessaritly mean giving away yer soul).
Now on the otherhand, I have a pretty well stocked home studio. A lot of this comes from doing beta testing for various instrument companies but another part comes from just plain hard work. I've done several jobs where I've worked simply to get another piece of equipment where I wouldn't have been able to do so if I wasn't look at art as pseudo-commodity stock. Its great for the amatures to say they ain't in it for the money, but what do ya say when ya want to buy that nice $20k console and yer day job ain't cutting it. Theres no way in hell I could justify something like this if I wasn't a professional (which I'm not...just a partially compensated amature as well).
To be honest, I really don't think most
clif
You can produce all you want and not give away your creations for free. You have a perfect right to not show anybody anything you've created unless you get money. You do not have a right to tell them what to do with it.
Copyright is not about preventing stuff from being taken from you. It's about telling other people what they can do with what they own in the hopes that you can make more money. At one point in time, this restriction was not unreasonable. Now it is. Deal with it.
Stop trying to claim that copyright is some holy thing handed down by God itself. The truth is, copyright was limited in effectiveness to the time in our history between the invention of mass publishing and the time that mass publishing became so cheap anybody could do it.
Copyright is no longer effective. It no longer works. Figure out something that does work and stop whining about a situation that has irrevocably changed. If people listen to your whining enough, and try to make copyright work against all odds, our society will be plunged into a dark age of tyranny.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
There is a:
Determining whether their actions were "legal" or not is the whole point of the lawsuit. I don't read the law the way the MPAA suggests and neither do a lot of other people. Furthermore, there is the question of what lawmakers actually intended, and what we as citizens want to happen, something that needs to be resolved legislatively. Legal challenges are an intrinsic part of the US system of law and government; this case had to be brought.
What kind of government do you think operates in the US? Your kinds of arguments might be applicable in fascist or autocratic societies, but in a democratic society that is governed by the rule of law, court challenges and political participation are essential. That may annoy some lobbyists and legislators with vested financial interests, but it still needs to be done.
I find your arguments both dangerous and naive. Similar arguments have been made throughout history, and I suggest you read up on the consequences. Issues of corporate control of the media are of fundamental importance to our society, and this is not only a good cause, it's an essential cause.
Implicit in your argument is that a technology should be outlawed if it allows pirating. That's nonsense and it was never the stated intent of lawmakers. The stated intent was to outlaw technology whose exclusive purpose was to allow pirating. If some otherwise useful technology also enables pirating, then the industry should have to figure out how to deal with the consequences, not society as a whole.
Besides, if the industry wanted to make cryptographically secure DVDs, they could. DeCSS is a consequence of either technical incompetence or a deliberate attempt to test the laws on the part of its developers.
This case will undoubtedly be appealed. It might well go all the way to the Supreme Court, as it is one of the first in what seems to be a whole series of new intellectual property disputes, and the Supremes might deem it a good idea to lay down a precedent. And appeals are where Garbus really shines; bear in mind that the man has never lost a case before the Supreme Court.
It might take a while, but I think we have a good chance of winning in the end.
--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
The whole piracy-is-infeasible argument was extremely weak from the very beginning. Spending any effort on that argument is just setting up a strawman for the plaintiffs to trivially knock down. Even if it weren't for good encoding like DiVX, it is a sure thing that storage and bandwidth technology will make 5 Gig movies pretty easy to pass around in a few years.
I was kinda saddened when I read Garbus splitting hairs about whether that guy or his assistant when to IRC to get a pirated movie or not. I mean, I guess Garbus has to fight and contest every inch of ground, but that whole issue is so pointless.
I'm a few days behind in my reading. I damn well better see some good arguments by Garbus about Fair Use and the purpose of DeCSS. If the court is still treating the potential-for-piracy angle as being relevant, then Garbus is screwing up.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
And from my own experience (I am a programmer@mandrakesoft), the most it takes is time. The hardware is pretty cheap. I program whetever or not I get paid to do it. But I likes to get paid for doing it. I think that is a pretty common view of the things.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
I love this -
ZDnet News:
(snip)
The attorney for the movie industry called it a clash of cultures: the freewheeling hipsters of the Internet vs. the hard-working creative talents in the movie companies. "The plaintiffs have a right to protect their content," said Leon Gold, a partner at Proskauer Rose LLP and the lead attorney for the studios, in his opening remarks. "The hacker zealots are wrong."
(/snip)
Oh, yeah, hard-working creative talents. Eisner and Valenti?
Neither of these guys has broken a sweat in 20 years. They live extremely well off the proceeds of their serfs.
Go, Go, Goldstein!
"...they may harpoon us, but they ain't gonna pick us up on no radar screen!"
What really drives your point home are the bios on the user pages you linked to. That's just too much to be a simple coincidence. Now, I'm not ready to believe that Signal11 is forming a "Karma Mafia", but I think it's becoming pretty clear that he's abusing the system. As you will almost certainly be moderated down I'm posting this with my +1 Bonus in the hope that it will cause people to notice your post and read it in its entirety. Moderators should take note of this and it will hopefully be a factor in their future moderating decisions.
I am not an idiot. Please use my name to email me.
"That's right, I'm quoting myself."
-Upsilon
We've all heard it before, but I'll say it again. DeCSS is not required to copy, its only required to play. Thank you. (The only piracy is stops is the ability to spread it across encoding regions, and piracy over the net)
They affect you in one country in the world. Fortunately, there are still N-1 other countries.
The Web being what it is, no matter how hard the MPAA tries, there will always be places from which you can download DeCSS. And many legal mirrors of DeCSS, too (though your dowloading it may not be).
You know, strong crypto used to be illegal where I am (France). That didn't stop me from using it: I just downloaded the software from a place (e.g. Finland) where it was. I see the same happening with DeCSS.
Have you even LOOKED at his user info?
Have you seen all the trolling, racist, anti-gay and what not comments? I don't think I'm the one that's poisoning something.
I am merely stating that this kind of person does not deserve some sort of extra attention,- the moderators will sort out how relevant his message is.
Breace
I'm posting this with my +1 Bonus in the hope that it will cause people to notice your post
Sjeez, you could have looked at his user info first (fortunately this is possible, because he did not post AC, even though he stated that), and look at his posting history. Hardly the kind of person worth listening too, right?!
I guess this will make me a karma whore, but there's no need for you to override the moderators. Now you are abusing the system to draw attention to the post of a person who's proven to be a troller, racist and so on.
Breace
Another issue is that sometimes the Supreme Court decides not to hear an appeal, letting the lower court decision stand.
cssmyass.com/org/net - up for grabs...
Incidentally, if anyone is interested in buying a 125+ karma account, I'm more than willing to sell...
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
To authors and inventors. Not to their heirs, employers, or assignees.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I would also note that folk music is now disseminated partly by recording; I've learned many songs by listening to recordings of Peter, Paul, and Mary, or the Grateful Dead, or Fairport Convention.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
This is my post. I half way expected to get a flamebait rating or two. There are more reasons than just money why an obviously guilty man beat the system, but his millions were the biggest factor. It really was to spark a discussion on how the MPAA is throwing huge amounts of money directly and indirectly into winning this case. It is a precedent setter, and they can't afford to lose.
:-)
/.]
Let the moderation system do its job. For every person throwing around a few bad mods, there are at least five others doing a good job. I've got the karma to spare
[hey, cmdrTaco! There needs to be more moderation points given out just to combat all the pr0n posts and juvenile offtopics rants which are cluttering
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
I was visiting my ex last week in the US, she works for a large advertising firm. They just got the largest ad contract in the company's history from a Political Action Committee representing the drug and health companies who have a stranglehold on the US market. She earned twice her yearly salary from the bonus for this one contract, and they didn't even try hard for it.
:-)
The surprising news is that dozens of other PR and ad firms also got similar contracts at the same time. The total amount to be spent will be more than all the presidential campaigns together estimated to be between US$90 million and US$220 million. Just to convince the US citizens to vote one way or another on some health reform law. Billions are at stake. The are so desperate, they are giving the ad agencies money to refund to other clients and buy out their ad spaces on tele and in print.
I prefer the old fashioned way, where someone outside the polling station hands you $5 and tells you which candidate to vote for.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
The only proven way of getting something to survive the ages is to write it down lots of times.
We can see the art of cavemen, the writing of the ancient egyptians. But can we hear their music? We hear Mozart on the radio, on CD's, in concert because his music was written down in sheet music and then many people copied it down again.
The (copy-righted) music of today is not allowed to be written out in sheet music for all to enjoy. It is only available to us on CDs which aren't going to last as long as most people seem to think. Sometime after the decay of the music industry the CDs will slowly lose their memory, the few tapes that exist will be practically worthless, and who ever uses a LP anymore? How will we listen to our favorite musicians then? The music can't be reproduced there is no sheet music to reproduce it from.
Devil Ducky
Devil Ducky
MY peers would get out of jury duty.
Q. When was the first time you heard of the existence of a
9 utility that defeated CSS and decrypted the content of one of
10 the studio's DVDs?
11 A. Early to mid-October of 1999.
12 Q. What was that utility?
13 A. DeCSS.
14 Q. What was the source of the original information you
15 received in the existence of DeCSS?
16 A. I found it on a news posting on Slashdot.
EEEK!! They are watching. That is scary.
(ps. I hope the above quote is not copyrighted or something)
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Yes, why people create things like music, OSS, science, art, mathematics, and novels is VERY complex. I just laugh at these people like ESR who claim to have it all figured out for OSS.
Online art and music need a lot of people to strat tring a variety of things including:
1) I'm writing one song per month, If people donate money I'll work at my day job less and make more songs.
2) Uploading versions of the song containing advertising to all the pirate mp3 sites, but distributing clean versions for free from the artists web site (which uses banner ads).
3) uploading mp3s to all the pirate sites which ask people to buy a CD of the same thing.
etc.
Anywho, It's a time for people to do what they enjoy and explore the finantial options surrounding their activities.. the operative words here being enjoy and explore.. not financial.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
The legal system you argue should always be obeyed wouldn't exist
except for law breakers. Laws shouldn't be broken lightly, but injust
laws shouldn't be followed blindly either.
This is about the continuation of music. Most of my MP's are from bands long since split, and the record company hasn't any CD's. Many of the bands I like were pre-CD so none exist, and all thats there is from other fans that have digitized thier cassettes and LP's to ensure that people can still listen to the work.
Ultimately, this is part of the war over Intellectual Property.
There are two futures. In one, almost every piece of information (music, books, film, software) is owned by somebody. Powerful organisations use standards to make sure that "free" information is not a threat (eg "extend and embrace", or encrypting standard AV content so that only those with cryptographic keys can create it).
In the other, almost every piece of information is unrestricted, and the people who created it are rewarded in other ways.
This is every bit as big as the fight against racism (although obviously quite different too).
Fixing copyright
Guess: The defense will lose and have no grounds for appeal which will be denied.
The grounds for appeal have never been that "the purpose of the decss project was to play dvd's in linux without paying anything". Regardless of the fact that it violates our fair use rights to have to buy keys to watch stuff we already own, you've sidestepped the basis of the appeal. The basis of the appeal, to the Supreme Court, is an appeal over the consitutionality of the DMCA.
Specifically, whether it is constitutional to ban all speech which describes how a mechanism works, that could be used to circumvent a mechanism in a way contrary to the intention of the inventor of the mechanism. This is what the DMCA does.
The defendants ARE guilty of violating the DMCA, and should be found guilty.
The DMCA IS guilty of violating the Constitution, and should be found guilty.
I understand that it's very hard for moderators not to mod people like you as flamebait - and I applaud them for moderating you up for the public ridicule you so richly deserve.
P.S. the commercial linux DVD player project initiatives were commenced only AFTER the decss project broke, because the MPAA didn't want to appear that they were denying a community a legal way to play movies. Of course, that still leaves Amiga, Atari, Solaris, BeOS, HP-UX, BSD, etc., etc., and their user communities, without a DVD player. Maybe if some more Jon Johansens get their homes raided we'll see some bogus development for a HP-UX DVD player (:
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
Admittedly, there are many alternatives to DVD technology, but they will take some time to get going.
The Video CD was an interesting technology, and is still currently a cheap alternative to somebody who wants to put video content together for a "set-top" box, but not pay the huge fees to author DVD titles.
There are also other nacient technologies which will eventually replace DVD, but it will be the better part of a decade before they become as solid as DVD.
What really makes me upset is that the DVD Fourm had (and to a small extent still has, although the clock is ticking) the opportunity to establish a universal video data format, and create a "consumer" multi-media computer platform that could be operated by your grandmother. Instead, the DVD format will disappear in a few years when the next generation of high data density devices appear. Efforts on projects like MPEG-4 will also obsolete DVD-Video as a format, which can be only described as a specification comittee gone mad at best. This is too bad, because it held so much promise.
No, the principle of first sale is explicitly endorsed by Congress in 17 U.S.C. 109, and a whole line of caselaw. Most recently, the Supreme Court used it in Quality King v L'Anze (1998) to allow importing of copyrighted works over the objection of the copyright holder.
Specifically section 109 includes 109(c): "Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106(5), the owner of a particular copy lawfully made under this title, or any person authorized by such owner, is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to display that copy publicly, either directly or by the projection of no more than one image at a time, to viewers present at the place where the copy is located."
Note that this is an affirmative grant and that only the exclusive rights of 106(5) are notwithstanding. Congress did not add the right of access control to 106, and there is nothing you can point to that states they intended to.
Therefore, my interpretation is the proper one given the accepted jurisprudence for resolving conflict of laws.
2) [Reverse Engineering] You admit that DeCSS qualifies for RE and then basically say "but it's still copyright infringement". 1201(f)(2) Allows the creaton of and (f)(3) allows the distribution of descramblers as long as they are not "infringing", so you allude to correct law. However the copying done by DeCSS is performed on a copy that was purchased. Fair use is very easy to prove under these circumstaces. See the Betamax case and its progeny.
3) Too bad copying entire movies is not even remotely "fair use" The HOLDING in Sony v. Universal refutes your position.
You must learn how to read law.
I note that you quote neither law nor cases to support any of your positions. Silly you.
4) There is NOTHING in free speech which gives license to violate copyrights.
In Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises, 471 U.S. 539 (1985) the Supreme Court refered to "the First Amendment protections already embodied in the Copyright Act's distinction between copyrightable expression and uncopyrightable facts and ideas, and the latitude for scholarship and comment traditionally afforded by fair use".
So indeed, there are two such principles. You can see also the decisions in Feist, Acuff-Rose, & Betamax for a better grounding in these affirmative defenses. Particularly, read footnote 13 in the Betamax case.
5) This case has nothing to do with antitrust or misuse of copyright and you'll find that neither of those lame defenses was even attempted, even by this lame defense team.
Garbus is one of the leading Consitutional Lawyers of our time. Perhaps you've heard of the Pentagon Papers? Perhaps not.
In an interview in Feed in May, Martin Garbus answered the following question:
He's refering to the case US v. Paramount where the studios attempted to justify block-licencing of copyrights, but lost.
Antitrust consideratons occur in no less than three ways in this case to lead to misuse of copyright:
(1) Collusion - the studios collectively use the DVD-CCA licence to strengthen their negotiating position and control the player market
(2) Tying - the right of access is sold separately from the copy itself. The studios use their collective "market power" to "force" "unwanted" licenced players on people.
(3) Restraint of Competition - The DVD-CCA licence has restrictive terms that force anticompetitive terms on would-be player manufacturers.
If you care to continue the discussion, please subscribe to the dvd-discuss list at Openlaw.
people are downloading X-Men today (no DVDs exist, as I recall), in pretty good quality
If you or anybody can actually prove this, it would be very helpful to the defense.
If you know of a DivX that is being "traded" out there that is definitely not available on DVD, then please email me and I will get that information to the defense.
The judge has pointed out that the defense cannot ask the plaintiffs to prove DeCSS caused DivX piracy if they cannot prove it did not. This would help prove it did not.
"If the artists want to sell their music in your little paradise, then great.
Otherwise what you are promoting is Marxism, pure and simple... whereby we take away the property of the people and redistribute it per state doctrine. "
It's actually a little more complicated than that. This issue is heavily dependant on your definition of property. I would argue that there is a 'natural' definition of property which deals with things that are physical - if I 'own' a house then I decide who may live there - if it were given to someone else then I would no longer be able to use it.
'Intellectual Property' on the other hand is a legal construct. An example of a society without the concept of intellectual property was ancient Greece. Storytellers in that culture told variations on the same stories - no one owned these stories - anyone could retell them, either in exactly the same way, or variations on a theme.
This took place long before Karl Marx was born, and I think that you would find few people who would call it a Marxist society. The concept of ownership of idea's can, and in my opinion should, be debated separately from the concept of ownership of physical things.
Bradley
"We project hundreds of tiny sea-creatures will be harmed by this, most notably the krill crushed beyond recognition by the impact of these devices. Additionally, there are no long term studies on the psycological impact of consumer electronics on marine life. They could be upsetting the entire ecosystem!!"
-Ima Treehugger, The National Trust for Preservation of Useless Organisms at Gunpoint.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Fact: DeCSS circumvents CSS
Fact: That is, currently (like it or not), illegal.
Fact: The judge has no choice but to do easy math: 1+1=Defendents lose.
Fact: The defense has provided the most worthless witnesses, (one "Internet Expert" had no knowledge of OC48 or great capacity in use today, Corley claims he knows of no one today with a hard drive large enough to store a DVD movie (4 gigs). Another expert tried to testify (goaded by defense attorneys) that the internet simply cannot handle the burden of thousands of 650 meg DIVX encoded DeCSS ripped DVDs being exchanged (despite hard proof on usenet daily/hourly).
Fact: The prosecution has only to make the most minimal argument, doesn't have to prove piracy, and has had more help from defense screw ups than it's own experts (which step by step show exactly how DeCSS is used bypass CSS (case proved) and then show how easy it is to make a DIVX movie and go into IRC and exchange it for another bootleg).
Fact: The Livid "expert" probably did more damage to the entire case than did corely himself. He was even busted twice of lying in his deposition (was he lying then or lying now?)
Fact: Corley is either lying or the most ignorant computer newbie on the block. He doesn't understand the most basic fundamentals of what he writes and claims he has no idea who almost anything he's involved in works.
Fact: Corley claims their website crashes daily when it's log file gets too big (must be a common problem for unix based systems I guess) and so they simply removed the log file. Then when popularity increased, their hit counter caused their site to crash when it was being called too often so they removed that too. This way he can claim, "gee you honor, I have no idea if my for-profit website has received more traffic than ever in it's existance before"
Fact: A perfectly legal, authorized DVD player for Linux will be produced by someone who took the time to apply and pay for the license and ANY possible defense based on "We linux users deserve to play DVDs for free" will evaporate.
Guess: The defense will lose and have no grounds for appeal which will be denied.
so, i mean, sure, i fully support the idea that artists should get paid for their work. i like the idea that people are making enough to make more music. but i think that there are a zillion counterexamples to any assertion that if bands can't get rich, there won't be any bands or any decent recordings. ( i don't think that you made this statement, btw, but i do think that it's part and parcel to the *AA's argument -- they don't care about teeny tiny little bands, thy care about their cash cows -- spears, sisqo, and limp bisquik).
The other thing to consider though is how many of these "small" bands would be doing ti if there wasn't a chance they could one day make a lot of money? Would the spend their lives on the road, making very little if any money, if they didn't think that one day they may "make it big"? Sure, some would, but I would guess that most of them wouldn't.
Most people who are in a band full-time are there because they believe they are good enough to eventually make a good living off of it. They love music and everything else, but they think they can make moeny, and that's why they do it. If you love making model airplanes, and just feel compelled to do it in your soul, are you going to quit your job and start making model airplanes every day? No way, because you realize you can't ever make enough money to support yourself doing that. If you take away the hope that people will get rich from making music, most people won't put as much effort into it, because they HAVE to have a backup plan, because they don't have the faith and hope that they have now that they can one day make it huge. In the end, it's always a matter of economics.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
The whole IP system is in need of a fairly massive rennovation, though. Anything they could do to the current one would just be legal patchwork.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Seems like the brewing war could be averted by the simple act of Congress laying out exactly what is and isn't fair use. That seems to be the big question mark currently. Maybe they should take a look at the legal precidents, think about it for a bit, and explicitly enumerate, in tiny paragraphs, exactly what you can and can not do under fair use.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
11 THE COURT: I don't know what the point of all this
12 is. Obviously the case isn't over, and if there is more
13 evidence that sheds light on the subject, I will certainly
14 consider it, but it seems to me that there is a reasonably
15 strong case to be made for the proposition that the barn is
16 unlocked and this horse is out.
17 Now, it seems to me also that what the MPAA wants is
18 a legal determination that unlocking this barn was illegal,
19 and so the next guy who considers unlocking another barn is
20 going to have something serious to think about. I suspect you
21 are also asking me to issue an injunction against the guy who
22 unlocked this barn not to unlock it again even though there is
23 no horse in it. So, you know, I don't know that this witness
24 has any light to shed on that subject.
i read court documents so you dont have to ^_^
From Thursday's testimony:/ 0720.html
http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/DVD/NY/trial
6 Q. How did you know to go to the LiViD website, download the
7 material you downloaded in October and November?
8 A. I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
9 Q. Tell me what the trail was.
10 A. I read about it on Slashdot.
hilarious! slashdot in league with the MPAA.
news at 11...
I will check out your charges.
I have known Declan McCullagh since 1994, and helping him was one of the greatest regrets of my free-speech work. I can attest from personal experience that he will backstab people and increase their risk of being sued, if he sees any advantage to it. I've posted about this a while back on the dvd-discuss list, so I'm not trolling.
HOWEVER ... I know of no "rapport" of his with slashdot (but, umm, actually that would explain a few things ... hmm ...). What is this rapport of which you speak?
I think the original writer read too much into Jamie's posting the link. But, frankly, I understand the reaction.
There's something here to keep in mind. These issues, these legal battles, they aren't just flame-wars. We can't killfile the MPAA. We can't bitbucket a court order. We can't give a judge negative karma. Too many people have bought into the idea that we exist in a world that is unaffected by the powerful forces which shape society. Governments, large corporations, big-money. They are real. They affect you. If the actions of programmers are inimical to these interests, they can fight back with a vengeance. This lesson MUST always be remembered.
Horseshit. No guarantee of intellectual property rights is made by the Constitution. Congress is empowered - but not required - to create such rights for the original author or inventor and for a limited time
which bears almost no resemblance to today's copyright and patent system.
Sure it does. In fact, it is precisely what the current copyright and patent system is, where both only hold for a very short time. What's the problem?
First, corporations have no rights
Of course they do. If you really believe corporations shouldn't have rights, you need to move away from the US, to a communist country. Do you really think you have the right to go down to the GM plant, blow up the building, and drive a few cars from there away? Of course not because corporations have rights. They have property rights. Intellectual property rights, which are granted by the US Constitution, are a corollary of that.
second, property rights - especially intellectual property rights - are second to freedom of speech and expression
First of all, freedom of speech (and capitalism, and ...) is predicated on property rights; if you do not have the right to any medium of expression, you have no freedom of speech. Note that property rights are so fundamental that are not even a Constitutional amendment, but freedom of speech is.
Second, trade secrets, which is what is under issue here, are widely understood to not be freedom of speech. There are many cases of people going to jail and/or being sued in a civil matter for illegally using trade secerets to make money. Which part of this don't you understand?
You must sit at the white's only lunch counter, none o those dang negroes sitting at your table, who cares if its wrong, its the LAW.
But my decision not to vote goes deeper than a refusal to support one of two presidential candidates. Were that my only problem with the "democratic" society we have, I'd do some research on issues and candidates, then happily go to the polls and leave the "president" box untouched while selecting my "representatives" and voicing my opinion on whether or not Proposition 10928346671829243746, the Downtown Parking Space Revitalization Tax, should be passed into law. What I am doing by not voting in November is not giving my stamp of approval to the system which oppresses us. People say that if you don't like the way things are, you should "get active", register to vote, become informed about issues, write letters, and run for office. "Don't like the fact that taxes can take over 50% of your hard earned money? *You* have the power to change it! Start a 'I pay to much Tax' campaign, your representatives will listen!" Bullshit. For the last few decades Presidential and Congressional Candidates have campaigned on the platform of making thigs better. I'm still waiting. Four years ago, Republicans said they'd get cut back on pork barrel projects if they controlled congress. Last night the national news said that $$$ spent on pork barrel projects has actually increased. I have better things to do with my time than to decide whether I should vote for the candidate who promises to cut personal income taxes by 3% over the candidate who says that we should instead spend "our tax dollars" on programs to level the playing field for all americans (I have a real problem with that "our" - the money spoken of is either mine or yours, but does not belong to both of us, and the hand of "Government" does not belong in my pocket). I have better things to do with my time than to beg other people to let me keep my money. I decide how to spend my money. I decide what percentage of my money is for charitable causes. I decide to have personal responsibility. I decide not to turn my personal responsibility, my Liberty, over to someone else
The real problem (one which most people are unable to recognize) is that "Government" is largely a fiction that exists in people's minds. What is the difference between the geographic areas of southern Arizona and northern Mexico? If there wasn't a wall, how would you know that you'd just passed from Arizona into Mexico? Sure, there are people with Guns who will say that I'm incorrect, that Government is very real and does exist, and that I'd better pay their "income take" or they'll pay for my vacation at the concrete inn, but how do their threats support their beliefs and make them legitimate?
If there are any moderators left on this thread, they'll probably be inclined to mark this as a "troll" or "flamebait" (especially those with anxious clicker fingers). Revolutionary ideas are always scorned when they first appeared. There are a lot of people who are quite a bit more adept at expressing these sorts of ideas than I, and are skilled at responding to the "but if we didn't have government [insert Bad Thing here] would happen!" replys. The earth used to be considered the center of the universe, and all who said otherwise were suppressed. Women were forced to take an inferior position in society because of their gender. Slaves were once considered inferior to their white "owners". With the passage of time, these three ideas changed from being "facts" to archaic opinions, just as current views on democratic government will pass from progressive to foolish. Contact me if you're interested in some links that further expand on these ideas...
some things to think about:
"Giving money and power to the government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." -- P. J. O'Rourke
"Violence is the final refuge of the incompetent." -- Isaac Asimov
"Freedom is still the most radical idea of all." -- Nathaniel Branden
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
I am not worried about lack of availability of MP3s and DivX movies. As broadband becomes more and more common, these will be quite everyday. How many college kids do they think they'll be able to fine / throw in jail? Even in easy-to-police public forums (ie IRC), piracy flourishes.
(Personally, I only look for MP3s to fill in rarity holes in my 350+ CD collection. Most of the MP3s available on the internet are commercial blech or uninteresting (to me) techno.)
I can still make music on my own, and expect to be able to regardless of what Time-Warner does.
I am worried, though, that certain software or hardware devices could be declared illegal. I recently bought a GameBoy "GameLink" device from some shady guys in Hong Kong (see http://www.cd64.com/) -- this thing lets you copy ROMs that you download from the internet onto cartridges and play them on your gameboy, or copy catridges to your PC. Definitely a grey area of copyright law.... but I'm not using it for that. I'm using it to develop entirely new software for the gameboy, something which I think is and should remain 1000% legal.
It doesn't take a huge leap of imagination to think that these things would be covered under the DMCA (maybe if some trivial encryption were added that the device needed to "circumvent"). NOW my artistic expression is endangered! Now I can't make gameboy games for my friends (and grandchildren) to play. And this situation is what I find extremely frightening.
Those guys are obviously not selling the pirated VHS, otherwise they'd be standing on the street side.
Furthermore, there are no pirate DVDs there, just VHS and CDs. Manufacturing DVDs is rather expensive, even if you didn't have to pay for the source copy.
Finally, who gives a fuck? The trial is about the right to distribute a piece of software, not about the right to copy movies. There's no claim by the prosecution that they are using the software, or even wrote it.
"You may not agree with the law or its interpretation, but that's no excuse for breaking it! If you disagree that badly then there are perfectly legal means to protest which are a lot more effective in the long run. "
Actually, I'd say the most effective means of protesting it is to go to court and get the law thrown out as unconstitutional (or set precedent for a positive interpretation of it).
From a practical standpoint, Civil Disobediance works. (It also helps to make it difficult for those who would make laws like this. Who do you think has bigger headaches, the MPAA/RIAA or the college dorm collector)?
There's a film about him called, creatively enough, *Leadbelly*. I highly recommend it if you're interested in one of the most unique stories behind the music. But I'll briefly give you some highlights:
Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbedder(sp?) was a travelling musician in the 20s and 30s in the mostly-rural South. Like most musicians of the day he made his money by playing in bars and saloons, at village festivals and the like. But he was unusually good, and played a 12-string guitar so fiercely that he sounded like a whole band all by himself. He also composed some of his own great lyrics, despite complete lack of education, in addition to playing the old stand-bys that everyone back then knew (House of the Rising Sun, Midnight Special, and a bunch of other now-famous tunes). He was in prison twice, if memory serves once for assaulting a white man who assaulted him first, and once for murdering one who also probably deserved it. One time he was in jail in Texas, and he was allowed to have his guitar in prison--the governor's summer house happened to be right across from the prison, so Leadbelly was brought over to play all the governor's parties. He impressed everyone there, and even played a song once whose lyrics were a plea to the governor to pardon him; Governor Pat Neff was so impressed, that he said the last thing he'd do before leaving office was to sign Leadbelly's pardon. True to his word, the day the governor left office Leadbelly was pardoned. He went back to his old life as a travelling musician, before landing in prison again after he went back to his hometown and some white men picked a fight with him. That's when some people from the Smithsonian Institution, who were on a project to preserve folk music through recordings, heard about him and interviewed and recorded him in prison. When he was released, he'd become a minor folk celebrity and was able to do recording sessions with a bunch of the small studios that existed back then, as well as make money from playing in public. By this time he was older and the fire in his belly wasn't so uncontrollable, and he became the kind of middle-aged gentleman who, even though he may live in a fleabag motel, dresses immaculately and wears $50 shoes--in the 1950s, $50 shoes were beyond merely expensive.
His recordings got passed down over the years in ever-degrading forms, copies of copies of copies of the original acetate and glass recordings, and if you get older recordings of him they'll often sound terrible. A few years ago though the Smithsonian started restoring and remastering its collection of folk recordings, and then publishing them. So, Smithsonian Folkways has put out the CDs of the best of Leadbelly's recordings, and they sound nice and crisp. The one caveat is that Leadbelly sang in the old tradition, and his stuff sounds far more original, far more rough and surprising than today's music. It takes some getting used to him, since we've been raised on sameness and often blandness in our music, but he's the best damned guitar player this side of Robert Johnson (the 20s bluesman who, the story goes, made a deal with the devil at a crossroads, in order to become the best guitar player ever--cf. the movie *Crossroads* with Ralph Macchio for a Hollywood version of his story).
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
The DeCSS case isn't the issue at all. DeCSS is ultimately unimportant *in and of itself*. But the principle that's really being fought over here is the most important, most fundamental principle there is. It's about personal rights versus corporate rights, and this will be the big fight of the 21st century. The Civil Rights movement, one of the greatest advances in this country--which should never have had to happen in the first place--ensured that ~20% of the country's population finally got rights equal to those of the other ~80%. But this battle will determine if each and every American will be giving up many of those important, fundamental rights, or if he gets to be as free as his forefathers. Here's why it's so important.
Corporations are legal fictions which have evolved over the last 2 centuries to have all the rights that real people have, but with fewer responsibilities and far, far, far greater resources. Wal-Mart, for example, can ruin a local economy just by building a store in a small town, because no other stores in town can sell as low as Wal-Mart thanks to the volume discounts Wal-Mart gets on the wholesale end; therefore, low-income people will *have* through economic imperative to shop there, forcing other stores (esp. ones owned by actual people) to go out of business, which causes more and more people to work for Wal-Mart which pays a wage which is entirely unlivable unless you buy everything from the cheapest source in town--your new employer, Wal-Mart. Results: almost all other retail stores in small towns go out of business, so that most of their old employees now work for Wal-Mart, and can only afford to buy from "the company store." It's a 21st-century version of a practice outlawed after abuses in the 19th century, but it's legal since there's no company policy to force people to buy there--it just becomes an economic necessity when Wal-Mart moves in to a small town. And of course Wal-Mart loses a ton of cash initially when moving into small towns, but as a megacorp they can afford to let their profitable stores subsidize taking over small towns until those towns are entirely under Wal-Mart's economic control (at least regarding the retail sales and low-income workers). Also, Wal-Mart often drives all other supermarkets and grocers in small towns out of business, because Wal-Marts with supermarkets in them sell the food at or below cost in most areas, since the retail sales section of the store is immensely profitable. If you disagree with this analysis, then you haven't lived in a small town both before and after a Wal-Mart moves in. My nice little college town was destroyed by a Wal-Mart; we used to have a wonderful, colorful Main Street, and now it's an abandoned bunch of boarded-up buildings.
But what does that have to do with tech, or with DeCSS and the rights I mentioned in the first paragraph? Wal-Mart, as a huge corporation, can do things no individual could ever afford to do, and can drive all the smaller guys out of business, and put lots of people under its economic control. The same thing is true of most other sectors of big business these days.
Take the recording industry, for example. Over the years the top few companies gobbled up the entire market, so that now they have a complete lock on the market. They just made a deal with the U.S. to stop a price-fixing scheme for CDs which they'd been using for years--MAP, Minimum Advertised Price, set minimum prices at which CDs could be advertised by retailers, ensuring that retail prices for CDs would remain artificially high. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. The big record companies own almost all the recording studios, almost all the advertising agencies they use, almost all of the wholesalers they sell to, and a fair percentage of the retailers which the wholesalers sell to. The result is that it's almost impossible to get CDs produced outside of the big corporate structure into the pipeline at all, at any stage; at concerts and at specialty stores in big cities, those are the only places that albums produced outside the system can be found. Otherwise, the rcording studios find lots of raw young talent every year, record with a huge percentage of them, pick out a bunch of those to go to the next level and be sponsored by the company to put out an album that will be advertised a little and promoted while the band busts its ass touring--and oh, did I mention that the band goes in debt to the studio for recording with them? Yup, they get in debt for the cost of the studio time, production costs, and advertising, and the amount of an advance to live off of while touring. If they make it big they can pay it back and move up in the food chain, but if they don't make it big they still have to pay all that money back or go bankrupt. Most bands break up or at least end up owing their souls to Sony or whoever at this point. Studios often argue that CDs are so expensive to offset the costs of all the bands who fail, but bullshit: those costs are inflated since the recording companies own all the studios and postproduction and CD press facilities and advertising agencies they use, and since bands go into debt to the recording company to get that album out. Then, if at this point a band hits it big, they become a name band that might actually make money. For every band that does become hugely successful and makes a living from album sales (small percentage of income) and big tours (large percentage of income), dozens of bands went broke and got to start paying the big corporations back, file for bankruptcy, break up, etc. So, in effect big music stifles art, stifles the advancement of art which copyright law is supposed to protect. Who the fuck cares if Lars Ulrich and Garth Brooks are making money out of the current system, when thousands of other bands got anally raped by the system? And the argument that mp3 piracy and new music services don't promote giving anyone payment for their work is crap, because when the old system is gone people will have money to support bands by buying merchandise or attending concerts, but as long as they're required to pay $15-$20 for every piece of music they want to buy, very little of which goes to any band, consumers won't have the disposable income left over to support artists directly. Lots of people have faith that this model, voluntarily supporting artists who disseminate digitally downloadable work, will work for all parties concerned: Stephen King, for example, fresh from the success of his pay-for-download book, is releasing a new book online; it'll be released in three segments, and as a test of the system he'll only release the last section if people give him enough money to account for $1 per download. One thing's for sure, the music companies' stranglehold on the whole music pipeline stifles advancement and bankrupts many more artists than ever get supported by it, and the advancement of the art is being stymied and interfered with: witness the "band factories" that have popped up, creating artificial bands with canned personalities and canned songs, people like N*SYNC who don't deserve to exist and are created by the industry to cater to the lowest-common-denominator of uneducated teenybopper taste. That is NOT what copyright law was created to do; it was created to promote the advancement of arts and sciences, not to have all-powerful corporations destroy the art of music by unnaturally promoting their own artificial creations which set the art back.
The movie industry, represented by the MPAA and the DVDCCA, are doing the same thing with films. The scariest thing for them is for there to be a "Blair Witch Phenomenon," with low-budget, creative, *new* films cutting into their market for over-budget canned studio plots recycled since the 40s, actors and actresses who look absolutely nothing like real Americans in the public at large, movie theaters who not only charge $8 for a ticket but have the audacity to in addition charge $2.50 for a small watery coke and $3.50 for small popcorn with watered-down fake butter. Why else would they decree that no film released on the Net before being shown in theaters can ever receive an award nomination? No, getting movies for free isn't my right. But it is the right of filmmakers to release their films in new media without being discriminated against by organizations controlled by the top few mega-corporations. It's not my right to make illegal copies of DVDs and upload them to the Net, but it is my right to take a DVD I buy and play it on anything I want to without having to pay extra for software licensed by the DVDCCA; it is my right to take clips from that DVD and splice them together for a presentation, or to use clips from a DVD in a collage/montage fashion in a new work, or to write new software to play it and skip over those fucking 10-minute commercials Disney puts before its movies and sets the copyright notice bit on so that DVD players won't let you skip the track, or to do any number of other things which the people in Hollywood say I can't do, but which Fair Use law says I can.
And I haven't even touched upon the copyright issues the studios have saddled us with, yet. Copyright originally lasted 14 years, now it lasts the life of the artist plus 100 years. Big corporations, Disney in particular, got those laws changed to keep their characters and works from ever passing into the public domain. Ironic, since Disney built itself using characters in its motion pictures who were derived from characters in the public domain, characters invented by the Brothers Grimm and other writers and storytellers. We need the public domain. We need IP to pass into the control of all of us after a reasonable period for the creators to derive a profit. 14 years, for example, is more than enough time for the big studios to derive major profits from their films: big films usually make a small profit on initial release, then a huge profit at rental within the first couple years; smaller, relatively unsuccessful films usually make their profit at renatl within 5 years. 100 years after the death of the artist is utterly insane, and a complete violation of our rights. We have a right to have IP pass into the public domain, so that after its creators derive profit we can all benefit from it and build upon it. Take the hugely popular TV show (in its day, it was #1 up until Tom Selleck quit the series and it folded), Magnum P.I. There has never been a film, although Tom Selleck said just the other day on Larry King that he'd love to do a film version, but he can't because Universal owns the rights and Universal is in tumult and has been for a while. Guess what? It's been 20 years since that show was on, and if Universal isn't going to use the film rights it shouldn't have them--under old copyright law, the character would have passed into public domain by now and a more competent studio could do the film with Selleck, but instead Universal and current IP law are preventing the furtherence of the arts rather than furthering them as IP law was supposed to do (not that Magnum is all that artful, but you get my point). Companies today never want their characters or music or other IP to pass into public domain; they want to carve up the markets entirely for themselves, keeping forever whatever IP they buy the rights to or create in-house. That's not how it was supposed to work. IP law is backfiring, and taking away rights from the common man. Shekespeare made money from his plays even though some publishers were pirating them without paying him. Writers made enough money to support themselves even before copyright gave them huge periods of time in which they had exclusive IP rights. Beethoven, Haydn, and Leadbelly managed to support themselves without a Big (Brother) Studio protecting their IP "for them."
That's what this is about. It's about the rights of individuals and the rights of whole cultures. It's about whether we will become a corporate culture, controlled by a few powerful companies with vast IP warehouses, or whether we will be individuals free to invent and build upon the IP of the past, or simply to enjoy the IP of the past. Much of it is disappearing. We now live in a culture in which television shows and other short-term outlets are important factors, and these cultural artifects are being lost to us all the time. Why shouldn't I be able to freely distribute a television show which hasn't aired in 20 years? Those TV shows made their profit at the initial airing, there's no need to keep the IP under lock and key. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could have vast IP storehouses online, where for a few dollars to pay for bandwidth and server upkeep we could download episodes of our favorite dead TV shows? Less than 1% of them ever make it to retail tape. But that will never happen under the current system. It reaches beyond that, into film, literature, music, and the rights of the people to engage in Fair Use of all of it. What we have is a cultural crisis, and a set of industry monopolies in every realm, and it needs to be dealt with. It's bigger than DeCSS, DVDs, or Linux. It's about our way of life, and our freedoms.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
I will be the first one to believe that corporations' greedy insidious actions and the DMCA are wrong, unconstitutional, immoral, and potentially life threatening when it comes to their environmental irresponsisbility. (obviously last point not about DMCA.) BUT!!! You simply CANNOT say this is as fundamentally evil as what people fought against in the battle for TRUE recognized equality and civil rights! Not if you want anybody else but a bunch of geek zealots or possibly bigots to listen to you - because:
In the fight for civil rights, people were fighting for true equality. In that society they were very much seen as second class citizens, if even citizens at all. They were trying to enlighten people against the bigoted notion that one race of people was inherently better than the other - a moral issue.
In our (as in the majority of upper-middle -or-middle-lower class citizens) fight against corporations we are fighting their power, which is based on their wealth - an economic issue. The notion that the rich and powerful are "better" individuals than the rest of us is nourished by the very system of capitalism, which I'm sure very few of us is actually completely against. The rich and powerful WILL get better tables in better restaurants, better schools, better living conditions, better legal protection, better political representation. It is noble to fight these things but when you think about it, since anyone could potentially become rich, and NO ONE could potentially become a white male if they are not already, the injustice is not as deep, and is at least PARTIALLY merit/incentive -based.
It is certainly up to us masses to band together to be more powerful than that top 1% of assholes who are "keepin' us down" like the MPAA. And no easy task, that. But please remember that the loss of certain aspects of free speech is NOT as awful as never having it to begin with, or any chance at all, much less a fair one, which is what MLK and other civil rights leaders were fighting against. And you will NEVER get a majority of the population to believe that it is (as awful) no matter how hard you try along this line of reasoning - only alienate them.
ooky
"I...hate...you...Walt...freakin'...Whitman!!!! LEAVES OF GRASS MY ASS!!!!"
As much as I'm not a fan of organisations like the RIAA and the MPAA, not with the crap they promote and the decent stuff they stifle, I still can't help thinking that the DeCSS defendents should lose this case, for two reasons.
Firstly the fact is that whether or not their actions were moral, their actions were most definitely not legal and refusing to comply with the law is still a crime whether it is keeping DeCSS on your website or murdering small children.
You assert that the actions involved in the creation of DeCSS are illegal, but you do not explain why. I would disagree that the reverse engineering of that CSS encoding scheme is illegal - rather I would assert that if the action of reverse engineering is to be declared illegal, it should be done so explicitly, in a public declaration, so those of us who don't like can move country to somewhere where it is allowed and encouraged. Like Norway for example, where reverse engineering is, I believe, protected by the constitution.
Anyway, I'll let you continue.
The other point is that by rushing out and making such a big point of keeping DeCSS available they make the more reasonable pro-freedom groups look tainted by association. Now it looks like the same thing is going to happen as soon as legal action is started, making it harder for organisations like the EFF and ACLU to fight for good causes.
Again, you assume that the act of reverse engineering the CSS scheme is illegal and base your following arguments on this premise. The whole thrust of this issue has been that long established guidelines set out in law do NOT map well to the latest technologies, and that access control systems are not currently well legally described and that the actions of the companies who are writing these access agreements may not be in the best interests of the general public or of society. Because this issue is demanding from both a legal and a technical standpoint, the number of people who really grasp these issues in full (and I'm not certain I count myself as one of them - more interested and concerned viewer than legal and technical expert) is very small, but the effect of these licenses certainly does have an impact.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
1> In the case there was no proof that DeCSS was actually used. And in all probality one of the faster rippers was used. However, those rippers are based on the same concepts as DeCSS. It may not be apparent to the court that there is a difference. The expert witness for the plantif ripped you've got mail from a DVD and turned it into a DiVX under 640 Megs. They traded it on IRC for The Matrix. It was not taped on the camcorder in a movie theater. It was the real McCoy. This creates a guilt by functionality issue for DeCSS.
Problem on point 2 is that the judge isn't a geek looking for artifacts on the TV screen. On a 13" LCD DiVX looks fairly compelling.
What it comes down to is how the DMCA is written. Since the Judge has pretty much said this case is about DMCA and not fair use. He has constantly ruled that any testimony that may indicate CSS as a content controll system rather than a copy protections system is not relivent. Thus any testimony that reflects that is stricken from the record.
This is a "Bad Thing" (tm)
In opening Statements Martin Garbus made it clear that this case was not going to be decided here. Instead it is a case for appeals, and probally a case headed for the supreme court.
Reading the court transcripts makes it very clear that the team is concentrating on getting key defence evidence gets in the record. They are also trying very hard to ensure that key items are struck from the record. They are trying very hard to have evidence that's considered here say removed. This is an importent step in the appeals proccess.
As far as the appeal, don't count on much from the U.S. Circuit Court. Posner is a well respected. His views align well with the views of the others on the circuit.
This is going to come down to a supremem court case.
NOW WAIT JUST A MINUTE. DeCSS (Reverse Engineering of CSS) is LEGAL in Norway. Just because the US had a lousy law passed (DMCA, bought and paid for) does NOT mean that it applies globally. If you US voters have a problem with your law, complain to your government. DO NOT, however, assume that US law is global law.
- Paul
I think of CD as a good thing, because I define it somewhat more narrowly than many people on this thread. CD, to me is intrinsicly non-violent, non-destructive and based mostly on getting attention and demonstrating the extent of your dedication to a cause. True CD (IMHO) does not "exert its views" over anyone - but it does put your views right out front where people have to deal with them, and they have to deal with the fact that the person expressing those views holds them so strongly that they will keep coming back, keep being arrested, keep being harrassed, because it means that much. The Boston Tea Party was not civil disobedience IMHO, because it involved destroying other people's property.
Mirroring your program everywhere so they "can't get rid of it" is not civil disobedience. Sitting in front of the courthouse until they arrest you and telling everyone that you are going through it for free software rights is. One tries to inspire other people with the depth of your commitment, the other just flaunts the law for its own sake. Its trying to bring the government to its senses instead of to its knees.
I have yet to see an act of civil disobedience out of this crowd.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
No; they'd be Free, like these.
<O
( \
X Adopt a bird today!
Will I retire or break 10K?
It is more likely that it will atrophy from it's failure to recognize when times "are a'changing"
Although I don't idolize the speaker, I couldn't help but think of this quote:
"And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them. Thus it happens that whenever those who are hostile have the opportunity to attack they do it like partisans, whilst the others defend lukewarmly..." --Nicolo Machiavelli, The Prince as translated by W. K. Marriott
I need a TiVo for my car. Pause live traffic now.
There is absolutely no reason to believe that when (and if) big corporations die, art (and culture) will die, too.
All this has nothing to with the artist. It's all about corporations getting as much money as they can.
Art will triumph. Corporations won't. Corporations fear Napster (or DeCSS or whatever) because it means the corporations are at peril. Art will never be at peril.
True, artists will have to find a way to be subsidized. But Mozart did okay. Haydn, too. Chaucer? Yep, Chaucer, too.
If anything erodes, it'll be the phoniness that corporations have substitued for 'art'.
Brittney Spears? N'Sync? Backstreet Boys?
Buh-bye.
There's something else happening here, and it's a combination of the DMCA, the Sonny Bono Copyright Act, and the current patent frenzy. These things all favor big, established players, primarily US and Japan.
Take reverse engineering, for instance. There is a much more enlightened policy on this in Europe. Perhaps if European industries were as worldwide-entrenched as US and Japan, that policy wouldn't be there. But it is, and it's part of the groundwork.
So the US just isn't too friendly in the IP business, be it arts or science, unless you work for one of the big players.
So go somewhere else.
Go to Europe.
Go to Latin America.
Go to India.
The Rest-of-the-World is getting to be a big enough market to just ignore silly US protectionism.
Since I'm a US citizen, born and raised here, I have to say that we take these actions at our peril. We may well be building a cozy little box for ourselves, and we'll get passed by.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Anyone else ever wonder why they just dont take cases like this directly to the highest court possible? I just think that big cases like this would get over with so much faster. You know who ever looses is gonna appeal the case, might as well just cut out the middle man.
I strongly disagree with this.
1.) I believe that there is no imperative to follow unjust laws.
2.) Some of the most visable reversals of unjust laws we the immediate effect of their being broken. (eg Rosa Parks)
3.) For laws such as the DMCA, which are probably unconstitutional, the courts make an excelent venue to chalenge them.
3a.) By breaking the law, 2600 has caused the whole situation to come to head. Because of this it may be possible for the Supreme Court to be hearing the case in another year or so.
3b.) I belive that all parties in this case have an extreeme interest in seeing this case settled as quickly as possible. 2600 would like to be able to speak freely as soon as possible, while the MPAA would like ruling in their favor as soon as possible so that they can better suppress DeCSS
4) On the other hand, if this was being fought through a strict constitutional chalenge, the MPAA would have no motivation to see this case though quickly, as they obviously prefer the status que.
5) Overall, however 2600's actions are irrelivent. If 2600 had not posted DeCSS, the MPAA would have sued the next juiciest target. 2600 simply has an "evil hacker" image which makes them the best target.
They are also paying out billions of dollars in a settlement.
I would also say that the $145,000,000,000 damages assessed by a jury is a loss. Though that probably in appeal for a long time.
One potential disadvantage to a large company with lots of litigation is that if someone is ruled against them in one case, they can't fight the same thing in other cases.
Fight Spammers!
Fight Spammers!
Archive three copies of anything you want to preserve. Periodically (depending on the particular system you're using), check the three copies against each other. If an error is found in one copy, use either of the others to produce three new copies and dispose of the one with an error. Now you have five good copies. Rinse, lather, and repeat.
Storage -- physical or electronic -- might force you not to augment the number of copies. Keep the three latest.
Sure, you might get the same bit errors on two copies, thereby "outvoting" the clean copy. Since bit errors are essentially random and uncorrelated, the odds of this are, I believe, truly negligible. You might also get some errors in one copy and different errors in another. That's OK -- as long as two copies agree on a bit, use them to reconstruct a "clean" copy.
I've thought about this off and on, and other than costs of storage, I don't see how this would fail. (If technology leaves behind your format, you're hosed, but that's really a different issue.)
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Assuming the dire predictions of a court loss are true, here's one strategy for resolving the situation: do everything possible to make the new DivX (or even some other format; anything but the locked version the industry is pushing) used ubiquitously in the same way that MP3 has become. Then make existing content available in this format. This would include piracy, personal rippers, etc. The whole idea is to get the public-domain format to become the defacto 'standard'. Pretty soon, commercial manufacturers will come forth with players, recorders, editors, etc. for this format. Even DVD players will have to be able to handle this format on top of DVD. At some point, the industry will have to capitulate and offer content in DivX if it hopes to maintain its profits. Until they do, people will rip and pirate their material to the more convenient DivX (or whatever). MP3 is well along this path already, and I predict industry resistance to distribution in MP3 form will ultimately crumble. Now, it's just necessary to do the same for other content.
As I said in my post, I would love to make a living from it. I am one of those folks who want to create for a living. There is nothing bad about it, nor did I say there was.
What I said was this: money is not the incentive to create. Whether I get paid or not, I will always create. I would just prefer to get paid for it.
The purpose of my original post was to refute the statement that "art will dry up without monetary incentive."
That is not true.
Now, paying artists for making art certainly allows them the freedom to spend more time creating art. I would not refute the claim that money allows for more art to be created because the artist does not have to worry about another source of income.
But I would bet that most artists, who are passionate about their art, will create whether they are paid or not. As I said before, in my case, I create because I am compelled to - not because I think I can make a buck. However, if you want to buy my art, allowing me the luxury of making a living from it, I would love that opportunity because it would allow me more time to create.
think about posts as you read them - it helps sometimes.
wish
---
In fact, several watchdog groups are preparing a class action suit against both the "big five" tobbacco companies and the lawyers who wrote the settlements to reverse the settlements under anti-trust law.
The settlement made the lawyers involved (like Minnesota's Mike Cericci) extremely rich, will result in almost no money whatsoever going to insurance members and tax payers (on who's behalf they were supposedly suing), and here's the real gem:
The companies which settled were being sued for deceptive advertising and hiding the results of some studies. The punative damages are high, so they made the argument that if they tried to pass the cost on to their customers, smaller competitors would push them out of the market. That would put them out of business, which means no more payolla for the lawyers. Therefore, a provision was written saying that any new tobbacco company that comes along will be required to pay into the same settlement fund, even though they had no history of wrongdoing.
The upshot of this is that it does not hurt the tobbacco companies... not one little bit. All they need to do is raise the price of cigarettes a little, knowing full well that anybody that wants to enter the market will have to do the same (and will lack the resources... therefore not enter the market.)
So, in exchange for the possibility of losing a few customers to higher prices, they have guaranteed a monopoly trust position over a multi-billion-dollar market for the next couple decades.
On top of that, they are required to fund PSA's... some of which paint them in pretty good light, and those that don't are still free publicity. Previously, it was illegal for them to even do TV product placements.
So, tell me, how have they lost?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Ah, but this is another way that they win.
If you live in a state that was covered by one of these settlements (which are pretty much boilerplate now), then you personally can't sue them for anything, because it has alrealy been litigated for you by the state (or the feds, depending on where you live). The lawyers got most of the money, the government took their slice and allocated it to pork-barrel "health awareness promotions", and you get nothing. (Or, as big tobbbacco companies would put it if you caught their eeeevil overlords off-camera, "Nothing! Nothing! Nothing! Bwahahahaha!!!!!!")
Aren't you glad that your government loves you so much?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Fortunately, we are not in any situation remotely close to that yet. I personally don't care whether I can watch Happy Gilmore and The Matrix on DVD as opposed to VCR. I don't care that the RIAA only wants me to use their CD's and not make any additional recordings for my own use. Yes, I think they are wrong in their thinking, but at the same time I don't think it is bad enough that we need to be overdramatic. *BUT* keep in mind, with the thinking behind these large corporations being similar to that of the Catholic church during the Dark Ages, we have to stop the progress of this now. It is much easier to boycott the 1st season "Saved By The Bell" episodes on DVD now than it could be if we allow our society to fall back into a dark period with a small group of people in power of every aspect of our lives.
To make this sound Jon Katzish..."HELP! I'M BEING OPPRESSED! I'M A GEEK!"
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
People have said that "if it's not legal, it'll just go underground." They've posted a picture of people selling pirated videotapes a block from the courthouse, to prove their point. I think that this photo proves an entirely different point.
My family lives near where that photo was taken. A huge percentage of those pirated videotapes are copies of videos made from tapes made by people sitting in a theatre with a camcorder. The rest of them are copies so distorted it's fairly impossible to discern a picture. Either way, I'd much rather pay $4 at a blockbuster to rent (and then copy) the tape myself than $8 to buy a copy on the street when I have to sit 6" from my screen to make out what's going on in the movie, while listening to the person sitting next to the guy with the camcorder crunch his popcorn louder than the actual soundtrack of the movie.
Legalizing stuff like DeCSS will make a huge difference. You won't have to go underground, and that makes it acceptable, unpunishable, and mainstream... it means that dvd rippers with DeCSS and the like will be sold in stores for the average joe, and consumer reports will help him comparison shop. It means everyone has access, not just those people who look to the underground.
Do something about world hunger. Click here
That the point about civil disobedience is that it's disobedience. That is, don't indulge in it unless and until you're prepared to take a few whacks in the cause of Right.
I say this not to discourage anyone, nor to suggest that the MPAA doesn't have its head shoved where the sun doesn't shine on this issue (on which matter I Express No Opinion) but to simply try and ensure that folk have thought about what they intend doing.
The big question is: what will it achieve, overall? I mean, sure, lots of people can bypass copy-protection and so on, but 99 per cent of the population won't bother. I feel sure that the corporate interests are fully aware that breaches of copyright by small-time hobbyists, by and large, don't cost them sales in that these people are taking copies of material they probably wouldn't have bought: the people who do buy legitimate copies aren't going to start searching for counterfeit stuff - the whole point of enforcement is to keep the commercial counterfeiters underground where they're too much trouble for the regular punter to find.
So you can download and use DeCSS if you want, but you aren't going to hurt the market any: all you'll do is provide them with more targets to sue in order to keep the commercial counterfeit operations out of the light.
I'd suggest that the real remedy against this sort of commercial exploitation is to stay away from their part of the market. Stick with live music, don't buy CDs, see films in the theatres only (far better than watching at home, and the more you go the more the price comes down) and generally steer clear of artists who've taken the corporate shilling.
Having set that out, I think it's abundantly clear why the epitaph for the corporate music and video industry need not be carved just yet.
-- AndrewD
A Maze of Twisty Little Laws, All Different.
In that post I said that based on my analysis of the legal system that I believed that if it were tested with innocent defendants that I expected the legal system to have a false guilty error rate of about 90%.
I am sure that there are a number of people who would like to know why I say that. My analysis is based on the results of simulations of the legal system which are performed in Law school. The simulations are so called 'moot courts' - where students are chosen to take on the roles of prosecutor, defense attorney, defendant, witnesses and jury. The moot courts are used to train the students in actual court room behavior and are made as realistic as possible. Often the law professor serves as judge in the simulation, although sometimes an actual visiting judge will sit in.
Although everyone involved knows for a fact that the defendant is innocent the conviction rate in moot court is about the same as it is in real courts, the prosecution wins about 90% of the cases. So great is the illusion of justice created by the rituals of the legal system that it never troubles any of the participants that their simulation arrives at the wrong decision 90% of the time. If the legal system actually worked the defense would win 100% of the cases in moot court. All that the simulations are actually showing is that fabricated cases work just as well as real ones.
In my opinion much of the legal system is carefully designed to keep people who might question it from ever thinking about what is going on inside of it.
Artists create because it is a part of them. They create because to them, it is like breathing. They can only go so long without doing it, and the longer they go without creating, the harder it burns inside of them
yes i am a musician
luckman
luckman
I don't involve myself with flames, much less know how to bait one.
Not being able to play Star Wars on my Linux box is not on the same plane as Martin Luther King fighting for the right to drink from the same water fountain as a white person.
While I have great respect for Dr. King and the civil rights movement, I think that we are currently in the midst of something that is of equal, if not GREATER importance.
It's not about pirating DVDs. It's about free speach, free thought, and freedom from corporate repression. Whenever a Big Company with billions of dollars says "You can't do this", our freedom is being eroded. The MPAA thought police are telling you what to say, what to think, and how to act. Most people are simply *controlled* by the entertainment industry, although most freedom-loving Linux geeks probably don't fall into that category. In a world full of media-controlled conformists, it is the duty of the non-conformists, the geeks, to rebel.
While Dr. King may have given black people the right to drink out of a water fountain, we are giving people the right to *think* without the MPAA's gun to their head. Money can be as damaging as bullets, my friend, and Hollywood has no shortage of cash.
This is the new rights movement. The Free Though movement. And it is the Geeks' Movement.
-- Floyd
-- Floyd
I'm not trolling, I truly believe this is a legitimate question.
I keep hearing about how people buy lots of DVD players and movies to watch instead of VHS, which is obviously true since VHS is declining. And the biggest market that is probably attracted to this technology is us. If we don't like what the MPAA is doing, why are we buying DVD stuff?
Analogy: I don't like the fact that NT crashes all the time and I don't like the license agreement for it. What do I do? I don't buy it! It may have better support for this and that, but I still don't buy it. If the MPAA doesn't want to release specs on what it does, fine, boycott and let their technology suffer until they clean up their act. You won't shrivel before the sound quality on the video tapes (which isn't that bad), I assure you.
A better analogy: I hate softmodems. They don't work as quickly and they don't work in Linux, and the companies refuse to disclose specs. I don't make a little device to put on the PCI bus that records all traffic, then make a backend to minicom and pppd to make the modem understand AT commands. Instead I buy a real modem! If I made one of these little backends I would probably get sued, albeit unjustly, then the big company would win because they have a tiny point that it's licensed material (very tiny, and not even true) and they have all the money.
The way democracy works in the US is the public filters out bad products. If the toaster you bought a week ago ate your pet rock, you tell your neighbor (or with email, a few thousand people) and no one buys it. But by buying the products you're endorsing the licensing on the product. You don't like it? Use VHS, I see nothing wrong with it. Don't expect to run to the government every time and sue when you don't get your way. The government upholds the law, which says anyone can be as stupid as anyone wants. So the MPAA wants to do something dumb? Fine, don't support them, which includes not buying their offending products and giving them profit.
Someone's definately going to call this a troll, but like the guy who risks his 'net connection to relay his message, I will do the same.
# debian/rules
The author of the quoted diatribe first writes, "...I want [my music] it to be available to my great grandchildren. But they will never hear it unless it's stored in some other medium than the material objects the record industry manufactured, all of which will be as mute as stones by then."
He then brings up some of the greats, "Of course, I wanted to be paid for it, and I was. Just as Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, and countless others were paid, despite the absence of copyright protection."
I enjoy the irony that the music of Mozart, et. al., despite not having their work "stored in some other medium", rather only having the "material objects the record industry manufactured, all of which will be as mute as stones by then" (that is, sheet music) is still enjoyed today, centuries after their deaths.
The point being, ultimately it's not the technology, it's the music, that ultimately determines whether your grandchildren listen to your music. They'll be still listening to Beethoven in 100 years, but not Britney.
ShoutingMan.com
Okay, so maybe the cases aren't exactly the same, but I've found that semi-high to high-profile cases always end up the way everyone expects them to.
I mean, Microsoft is going to be broken up, the Supreme Court isn't going to decide it any other way. Regardless of your opinion, it is going to happen, and the reason why is that "we just can't have it any other way."
Same thing with the DeCSS case, the judge is going to look at it, probably not know a single danged thing about the Internet, other than the fact it is full of pornography and his kid uses it a lot, and figure that this DeCSS must be another one of those "bad" things the Internet does.
The program is highly illegal by current standards of law, and the only way to change those standards is to adapt new law. Public opinion in this case is: "yeah, sure would be great to have DeCCS, but it ain't gonna happen."
So the likelyhood of anything favorable happening is kinda slim. I think Slashdot should start focusing on laws that affect these topics that show up on the site more and more as events take place that put the Internet in the hands of our Governments.
It will be an amazing event to be able to sit and watch them nip away at it here and there and then eventually start to consume it whole. I'm guessing the nipping is just about over and it is time for the meal.
Hey, I want to see the Internet remain free like the rest of us, but it just "ain't gonna happen."
Yes, it's time for civil disobedience to undergo a revival. I say go for it. Break the rules. Break the law. Pick your side and fight. Civil disobedience is about choosing to violate the law because sometimes being criminal is the right thing to do. Are you worried about a record, a news story, your picture in the paper, what your in-laws will think? Don't. We're all criminals waiting to be caught. Being arrested isn't a sin. It's not an automatic black mark. Being arrested can be more powerful than voting. The law is the law until it isn't the law any more. Don't sigh and submit. You don't have to. Don't accept what you've been handed. Fight it. Rebel. Then write letters about it, post fliers, mail pamphlets. Hammer on the doors with battering rams, with your fists, with your head. Prove them wrong. Upset the apple cart, overturn the outhouse, barricade the bridges. Get some guts, some spine, some gumption, some chutzpah. You are privileged to burn the flag on the courthouse steps, to march without a permit, to chain yourself to the trees, to stand in front of the tank, to haul salt from the beaches to the people. You are entitled to tell everyone exactly what you're thinking. Civil disobedience means small battles standing proxy for large wars. By God, don't just stand there.
Wordnik, a dictionary project which aims to collect
One of the things we can do to fight off this law suit it too slashdot Congress to pass a bill assuring Fair Use. The MPAA is on a media blitz and confussing people about the basics of information, culture and copyright. What we need is to get Congress to pass a NEW LAW which guarantees Fair Use over the provisions of any other Copyright Law. We can wait for the Supreme Court to uphold Fair Use, but we can also demand from Congross these protections as well, and then undermine the Court Case entirely.
Orin Hatch is already upset with the degree the DMCA underminded Fair Use. We can HELP him fix his mistake. www.NYFAIRUSE.org is one organization which is trying to do just this.
http://www.mrbrklyn.com/amsterdam.html http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Declan McCullagh (the site which hosts the photo implying ill-behavior on Goldstein's part) has never been a friend of DeCSS or open source DVD. That he enjoys a rapport with slashdot is IMHO one reason to seriously question the ethics of those who run this forum.
While this doesn't necessarilly exhonorate Golstein, I would suggest we all consider the source and be appropriately wary of assuming the truth is being told (or shown) here.
I suggest anyone who is interested check out the archives of the LiViD mailing list. I found Declan's behavior to be shockingly reprehensible, unprofessional and downright destructive, and truly regretted that I had previously defended him on the very same list.
Declan is in my opinion responsible in no small part for what has happened with DeCSS (and is directly responsible for the original author of css-auth quitting the project as an act of self-defense). He is the main reason I don't read wired, and a contributing cause to my reading slashdot less and less.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
> And Rosa Parks was arrested fo breaking the law.
... were the legal ones (bus boycotts, sit-ins, etc).
Which is still remembered today and is used as the canonical example of an American fighting for her rights.
> The only actions which worked
The bus boycott would not have happened if Rosa had not been arrested. She brought attention and focus to the struggle.
Incidentally, sit-ins are illegal. Something about trespassing.
Also remember that there are two ways to change a law: get the legislature to change it or have a judge overturn it. In the case of DeCSS, the legislature was already bought and paid for and isn't about to change its mind.
The only alternative is for judicial review, but courts don't hear theoritical cases. The only way to get a law like the DMCA heard by a court is to break it.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
The next round of this debate? Digital Television! While the FCC is telling us that we'll be enjoying this wonderful new technology by 2006 - don't count on it. The MPAA and others are fighting like mad to control the delivery, and playback of digital content that will become HDTV (or DTV). You think they are going to transmit a digital signal and let you receive and record a perfect copy on to box or hard disk? Ha! Not likely...
The Digital Transmission Content Protection Method (DTCP) currently being debated will morph into some new standard controlled by the MPAA and others to control what you can see, and how you can see it. Check out some of these links:
Fourth digital-TV interface spec tossed into fray
US digital TV strategy "in disarray"
Digital interface debate resurfaces at Western show
FCC sets deadline on DTV interface issues
I'm completely thrown back that president of Time Warner, an AOL sellout, a completely capiltalist media company would make the following comment:
"This isn't just about a bunch of kids stealing music. It's about an assault on everything that constitutes the cultural expression of our society. If we fail to protect and preserve our intellectual property system , the culture will atrophy. And corporations won't be the only ones hurt. Artists will have no incentive to create. Worst-case scenario: The country will end up in a sort of cultural Dark Ages."
First he assumes that capitalism is required for cultural development. Second he states and boldly so that we must protect our "intellectual property system" when most people know full well that in it's current state it is flawed at best. The IP laws on the books currently reflect a society where products were largely tangable. In todays society these products are not so. Music, Software, etc. Lastly I'm shocked that he would seem to make the statement that "we control your culture" - we meaning all media companies. The truth of the matter is that popular music, news, etc. are hardly a basis to grow our culture on. They are capitalist sell out rip offs of something that is truly creative.
Now my rant to these companies; For those who purchase music regardless of the medium we should have the right to do with it as we *damn* well please. I sure as hell know what happens to a CD, or an LP if I play it over and over -- it fucking gets scratched, warped, or otherwise. That is why I transfer files to mp3 format - guess what I use napster also! And I buy more music than anyone I know. As for movies the media companies must think that they control every possible media solution avaliable because if I happen to run Linux or BSD, or QNX -- anything BUT MacOS or Windows and I want to use a DVD disk you come down hard. To me this seems completely retroactive of what the consumer needs.
My end statement would be that you, the media companies out there & the "artist organizations such as MPAA and RIAA - you disgust me with your arrogant misunderstanding of the very people who you market to. I would love to see all of you replaced.
I think Stephen King has maybe figured the right formula for "free" (as in speech) content. Release a part of the work for free, no strings attached, but promise further installments if readers pay voluntarily. The work becomes free for all after the payments are met, and the artist still gets paid. Tying payment directly to the promise of more from the artist is a lot more direct than the nebulous claims of "if we can't make money then the artists can't work and our culture will die" claims that the movie studios and recording companies make. In a way its like the patronage system, where someone contracts a work form an artist for a significant sum, but the work is made for all to enjoy (and the patron gets some recognition for their name getting attached to the credits). The trick will be to get it so it's relatively painless for many people to pay small amounts, and the incentive is made obvious, but not naggingly repetitive to the point of PBS beg-a-thons. I really hope King's effort succeeds, and becomes a model for more ventures like this.
I'm sick of hearing this "argument." Money didn't buy justice in the OJ trial. The LA DA spent millions upon millions of dollars trying to convict somebody, and then they made the bonehead move of putting a cop on the stand who had a record of being questionable and he happened to get caught in a lie. It was gross incompetence that got OJ off and nothing more. If you want to start a serious discussion about money and the courts then the real question to ask about OJ is how much more money did they spend trying to convict him than most people and why was that? For me personally, it would have been much more acceptable to let the bastard skate had LA county not spent $19million trying to convict him.
Don't believe me, then how come the tobacco companies got busted for $150billion?! They are the one group that has unlimited money and they lost their case.
Big money and big companies don't always win. They will in this case in part because 2600 tried to disobey the court when they were asked to take the DeCSS code down. They removed the code and then published a list of mirrors in an attempt to circumvent the court order. They lost a lot of credibility with the court by doing that. Goldstein is somewhat lucky to have not done jail time for contempt.
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..
You may not agree with the law or its interpretation, but that's no excuse for breaking it! If you disagree that badly then there are perfectly legal means to protest which are a lot more effective in the long run. This case certainly proves that point.
You might want to read Civil Disobedience by a Mr. Thoreau as to why there are many many people who disagree with you.
LL
"If you are falling, dive." -Joseph Campbell
Your imagery is spot on for 30 years ago but I think completely irrelevant for today. The connected citizen who disagrees strongly enough with his elected (or not) government has enough power to shake himself free without physical protest. The Internet makes it possible to work anywhere in the world, untaxed and undetected by a government or legal system. And I think civil disobedience in this day and age will be characterised more by code and data flowing through networks than bodies lying on University lawns.
Sure there will be casualties and I agree that the huge machine that is the Federal Goverment and legal system is not going to go down without a fight, but I think the very example you give of a Cobra gunship shows just how the rules have changed. Will the Government deploy Cobras and the National Guard against sysadmins mirroring DeCSS or Linux-using DVD software programmers? They can't.
What can they do? There are countries other than the U.S who think the DMCA is a crock of shit. If you're an information worker or a programmer or an artist, hell you can go and work there. You could even have your money in yet another jurisdiction - preferably one which laughs at any IRS attempts to come calling. Remember I'm not talking about a faceless mass of blue-collar workers here: this is a highly skilled bunch of people who don't like what their Governments are doing in the name of big companies.
I look forward to the next 20 years or so when the elephants realise they've been outsmarted...
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
The original from Thoreau.
--sugarman--
Didn't americans learn anything from the OJ Simpson case?
If you have enough money, you can buy any court decision you want. Right and Wrong haven't applied in decades. The MPAA has tons of money to spend to defend their monopoly, and the lack of morals and scruples to do so.
This case will be lost because the judge is well in the pockets of MPAA. The only hope is to bring this obvious fact out in the appeals court, and get the ruling overturned.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
You may not agree with the law or its interpretation, but that's no excuse for breaking it! If you disagree that badly then there are perfectly legal means to protest which are a lot more effective in the long run. This case certainly proves that point.
I totally disagree. If the law is wrong, you have an obligation to break it. You must be prepared to accept the consequences, but you don't need an excuse. The government is the one that needs an excuse, for passing this kind of crap, and they will have to look very hard to find one that doesn't say "we were paid to".
--
Communication is only possible between equals
How would one test the constitutionality of a law without breaking it? Rosa Parks is a pertinant example of why we should break wrong laws. It's called civil disobediance.
"The whole world is watching! The whole world is...(THUD)" -Uncle Duke in Iranian Prison
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
This case is going to lose for one reason. DiVX. DeCSS is no longer the huge issue. It's the use of DiVX in conjunction. The MPAA and TW have already provided proof that movies are being traded on IRC in DiVX format.
One of the original defences was no one had the bandwidth for trading 5 gig files. Getting that down to 640 Megs over a college internet connection gives huge ammounts of ammunition to the MPAA.
Remember Stack v. MS? Stack won $130m Microsoft won $30m. But MS bought Stack.
You may not agree with the McDonalds' coffee cup case, but they are a big guy too.
Big tobbacco lost! It took years and years, but they lost. It took hundreds of plaintiff lawyers to coordinate via the internet.
I have been using sharing information on my case with others via the net to help them (and myself) to win against Mattel.
Fight Spammers!
Certainly the last I checked under european law we are perfectly within our rights to reverse engineer any software which we own ourselves. Assuming [insert-norwegian-bloke] actually owned the piece of software he disassembled then he's done nothing wrong.
This stinks a lot to me since it's the whole 'America is soo big that it must be right' thing, and afaik no license agreement can withdraw your fundamental rights.
By installing M$ Office you agree to spend several hours a week banging your head off the screen and wondering where autobackup went
- no one would agree to that!!
As I see it, in disassembly he did nothing wrong. In redistributing that knowledge there may be some problems since it was derived from a work which he didn't own the rights to duplicate. However if the actuall CSS block makes up a sufficiently small amount of the total code then he might get away with that. I'm pretty sure in the UK you are allowed to legally photocopy up to a certain %age of a book.
And the Whilst I appreciate the good intention of DeCSS I think the people involved in this case acted foolishly and wrongly, and should face the consequences, no matter how much we might wish things had turned out otherwise.
f**k that - they stood up for what they believed in despite the fact that a foreign government was screaming nooo. If they had conceeded quietly we might never know that decss worked.
I think there's a good example of what the world would be like in the absense of big media. It's the internet porn industry. Because, up to now, the biggies were too squeamish to be associated with it (AT&T is now dipping its big toe in the water, however) and financiers are likewise loath to have their names associated with backing them, the industry is fragmented into thousands of mom-and-pop size operations. There's content for every fetish and taste, each struggling to gather an audience thru ads, spam, and word-of-mouth. I draw no conclusions as to what this 'means', just offering a glimpse of what a big-medialess world might look like. I have to say that, even if all big media vanished tomorrow, the forces of consolidation are inexorable, and we'd have it back again within a very short time.
When laws are evidently bogus, whatever is made illegal does not disappear, it merely becomes underground. Yes, the system is broken. Maybe it can be fixed; if not it can be bypassed instead. Vainly hoping for the right outcome still though. I will 'vote with my wallet' on this issue, boycotting is my middle name. FatPhil
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
One thing is for sure, I don't recommend reading the above links or posts on this topic while listening to all three (3) Rage Against The Machine albums. I am in a frenzy and about ready to return the power to the have-nots right here from my corporate cubicle.
"Just victims of the in-house drive-by. They say jump; you say how high?"
As much as I'm not a fan of organisations like the RIAA and the MPAA, not with the crap they promote and the decent stuff they stifle, I still can't help thinking that the DeCSS defendents should lose this case, for two reasons.
Firstly the fact is that whether or not their actions were moral, their actions were most definitely not legal and refusing to comply with the law is still a crime whether it is keeping DeCSS on your website or murdering small children. Whilst there are important moral differences between the two, we live under a code of laws which attempts to follow morality but in order to be effective must sometimes be harder than is perhaps necessary.
You may not agree with the law or its interpretation, but that's no excuse for breaking it! If you disagree that badly then there are perfectly legal means to protest which are a lot more effective in the long run. This case certainly proves that point.
The other point is that by rushing out and making such a big point of keeping DeCSS available they make the more reasonable pro-freedom groups look tainted by association. Now it looks like the same thing is going to happen as soon as legal action is started, making it harder for organisations like the EFF and ACLU to fight for good causes.
And you can bet that this episode will be used as the basis for more punitive legislation by a US government already dedicated to eliminating all vestiges of freedom on the net as it is.
Whilst I appreciate the good intention of DeCSS I think the people involved in this case acted foolishly and wrongly, and should face the consequences, no matter how much we might wish things had turned out otherwise.
---
Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
Seeing as how people are downloading X-Men today (no DVDs exist, as I recall), in pretty good quality (barring compression/audio defects), I'd say that the MPAA has far more to worry about than people distributing DeCSS.
Lately I've seen DivXes made from tapes done with camcorders snuck into theaters, and from screeners (tapes sent to movie reviewers/oscar type people), so I doubt that DeCSS is responsible at all for most of the increase in pirated movies (DivX, on the other hand, probaby IS)
From the NTY article:
After his son left the witness chair, Per Johansen told a reporter in the courtroom hallway that his son had done "very well." He noted that Jon's grandfather fought the Nazis in World War II. He said that he himself fought communism in Europe in the 1980s by working as a secret courier for Solidarity leaders in Poland, carrying money into the country and smuggling out documents.
"Jon is in an historical line," Per Johansen said proudly. "He is fighting for freedom."
Them's fightin' words. IT's good that his family stands behind him in this battle.
---
Play Six Pack Man. I
You can find my copy of DeCSS at http://WWW.Apocrypha.NET/DeCSS/.
I have has that there for a while. I too see that the DMCA is the last nail for many who only want to make small productions. If the DVD format is a licensed format, lecensed by the studios what chance does the little guy have.
This is an era where we can record our own music, edit our own video, digitize voice and pictures for future generations. Digital formats will last. The medium will change, but things can be copied from disk to disk. The quality will never go down.
We see this imortality of data as a boon, but studios don't. Studios see it as a loss. With analog formats there was lifespan to a movie, and copies lost quality.
Our boon is, by their definition, is the studio's loss. I don't think they will lose anything if the DVD format is open. I think that there will still be people small time productions, if it's open, and some control will be lost, but it's control they should never have had.
It's time we hacked the law, and exposed laws that protect corperate "freedom" by tossing the freedom of the people in the trash. If keeping the DVD format and platform closed is the only thing keeping American culture alive, then I for one think it should die. A more interesting culture will rise up. The one that exisited before large studios killed American culture.
Let's find out who voted away our freedom when they voted for laws to protect these closed formats. Let's publish the original notes and ideas of the people who pen the original copyright laws. Let's dumb things down forthe press. Let's PR our cause.
People who want to maintain the freedom that their parents fought for, have to keep up the fight. That is a war that never ends. Someone is always attacking freedom, just not always with a gun.
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
If the people taking that information feel like it.
What are you going to do, send them a box of cookies? Warm and supportive Hallmark cards? I'd like everyone who has a bunch of mp3s to apply the following filter:
- Remove all mp3s in your list that you actually own the media to, CDs, cassettes, vinyl, or, God help us, minidisc.
- Remove all remaining mp3s by bands you can actually swear you'll buy CDs from in the next three months. Be honest.
- Remove all remaining mp3s for songs you've only had on your hard drive for two months (let's give you a chance to throw out the chaff).
- If you really feel like you are someone who has the exclusive right to determine how much someone else makes (and, for those of you who are high-paid geeks, or don't think you're that highly paid, guess how much someone working at McDonald's thinks you should make), take off all bands that are incredibly famous millionaires, your Britney Spears, Metallica, and NIN kind of bands.
Armed with that list of remaining tracks, go over to your wardrobe and count how many band T-shirts you own by that band.What? No T-shirts? Well, where are your concert ticket stubs? Okay, none of those...umm, bumper stickers? (A stretch, who knows if they get anything from that at all.)
Let's get this "rewarded in other ways" thing nailed down before we start the revolution, shall we? And, heck, before we're in such a rush to help out all of the poor, unfortunate natives (the musicians, the artists, the writers), let's actually ask them before bringing (forcing) the benefits of our wonderful civilization on them. "Geek culture knows best for you" is not the approach we want to take.
Young people quite naturally expect - based on their experience with authority figures in their childhood years - reasonable behavior from people in positions of authority. THIS DOES NOT OCCUR when dealing with government entities.
The legal system is a giant unemotional machine, and if you get caught up in its gears it will grind you into very small pieces. The legal system does not care if you are right, or if your cause is just; the gears will turn no matter what.
The 'Due process' that the Constitution promises you does exist, but processing is what is done to a piece of meat when it is put into a grinder, and the results of the legal system are just as inexorable. Because of its great size and power the legal system is an extremely dangerous machine to get caught up in; roughly 90% of the people who are indicted in the Federal Court system are convicted; the 10% who are not are like the spillage from a meat grinder.
I suggested trying to fight an elephant, because the analogy is pretty good. If the elephant notices you, and you are engaged, your chances of escaping are very small. The one thing which we do know is that nothing bad is going to happen to the elephant.
You have read about cases where civil disobedience has changed things about government. What you do not understand is that the reason that you read about them is because they are so rare that they become news stories. Dog bites man is not news, Man bites dog is.
Back in the 1960-70's we had Kent State. I guess this generation will get a repeat: while the Seattle WTO disorders caught the law off guard, eventually that sort of behavior results in a massacre.
Are there other ways of doing things? Yes - well thought out words and ideas will do far more toward changing things than street protests ever will. Government is not going to lose a street fight - that is the one thing it is designed to win.
Have you ever seen a Cobra gun ship in action? I have. Trust me, civil disobedience won't last 10 seconds against a single Cobra gunship, and the National Guard has thousands of them. All that you will wind up with is lots of dead people, and no one to tell their side of things. History is written by the survivors - not by the people lying dead in the streets.
I find it kind of frightening that people's comprehension of the pre-segregation world is so confused that they can equate violating fundamental rights of movement and association with the right to watch a movie.
Banning DeCSS isn't about "the right to watch a movie", any more than segregated water fountains are about "the right to get a drink of water".
The latter is about discrimination, restricting freedom of association, and the removal of rights from a minority of society by an ignorant majority. The former is about maintaining a stranglehold on intellectual property, restricting freedom of speech (If I can't tell someone, in English or in C, how to bypass a broken encryption scheme, yes, it's restricting freedom of speech), and the removal of rights from a majority of society (the hundreds of millions of consumers who *used* to have "fair use rights" guaranteed by the supreme court) by a minority (the IP providers who can make more money off of restricting content distribution channels, controlling content player manufacturers, and moving even digital data to read-only and pay-per-use systems).
Granted, segregation was grossly worse, but with centuries of evil tradition to back it up and a subtle (and often too unsubtle) population-wide bigotry, that wasn't surprising. And racial relations improved, and are still gradually (too gradually for some) improving.
On the other hand, intellectual property controls are getting worse, and fast. The court cases that made VCRs, dubbing between media formats, personal MP3 players, etc. illegal are all pretty much moot now, since we've got this shiny new DMCA law that wasn't around back then. Even EULAs (you know, those "contracts" you "agreed to" without signing or reading anything) may become binding, and all the ridiculous restrictions therein take effect. The idea being fought here is the idea that you can purchase a data disc, "own" that disc, entertain yourself or run your company using the data on that disc, but have no control whatsoever over it except what the previous owner gives you, revokable at any time you try to move that data to a new medium, play it with an unauthorized system, publish incriminating benchmarks, or do anything else the previous owner doesn't like. Does that not worry you a little bit?
what if time-warner and the rest of the media conglomerates died? what would happen? how would we get our daily dose of standardized, nutritious, 100% USDRA of important information (all in a conveniently wrapped up package with a bow)? Wow, that was a horrible sentence, I'll try to be more coherent from here on out.
Anyways, what would happen if the massive media machines that puss Britney Spears and N'Sync on us went the way of the dinosaurs? Let's think about this for a moment. There wouldn't be any huge parent companies anymore (at least temporarily). We would all get our news from smaller, independent outlets. We would, of course, have to decide for ourselves on the credibility of said news outlets. That in and of itself is a scary thought, we would have to make an important decision with information that we would have to go out and gather ourselves. We wouldn't get everything served to us all nicely tied together on a silver platter with a certificate of authenticity from whatever conglomerate we went to for that information.
What effect would this have on the music industry specifically? Well, if we lost the conglomerates we would lose the massive marketing machines. And since there is no longer a massive conglomerate we could assume that we would no longer be bombarded with identical images of how everyone is supposed to be (from tv, movies and music). So, it's feasible that the massive appeal of teeny-bopper music and celebrities may decrease simply because there wouldn't be a concerted effort on the part of the media to inundate us with images of how we should want to look and act.
Of course, there is a frightening "other side" of that coin. What if, in the absence of any media conglomerates, in a world of thousands of independent media and news stations, companies and outlets, we were still bombarded with tv's and movies that basically amounted to watching people more attractive than us make out with other people more attractive that us, and complain about the difficulties of being attractive and popular? If that type of entertainment (and I use the term entertainment loosely) persisted with a myriad of independent stations...well I'd give up all hope on the human race right then and there and go live in a cave.
a cave with a generator and a computer to play games on of course. I'm only human.
Moller
EFF DVD Update: July 20, 2000
0 720_ny_trial_transcript.html
. html
/ cyberlaw/21law.html
, 7070_7,00.html
Universal City Studios v. 2600 Magazine
EFF Fights Movie Studios' Attempt to Monopolize DVD Players
Johansen Shines on Witness Stand in Defense of his Software
Jon Johansen, the Norwegian teen-ager who created DeCSS, the software at the heart of this case, took the witness stand Thursday morning to testify for the defense. Johansen explained that he was attempting to build a DVD player for Linux when he and two other members of the group MoRE developed the code. He also explained that DeCSS was written as a Windows executable file because the project had to be tested first on Windows since Linux could not read a DVDs UDF files. This testimony blew a huge hole in both the movie studios' and the judge's reasoning who assumed that because the code was written for Windows it had nothing to do with developing a Linux DVD player, as EFF's defense team has claimed for months.
The courageous teen also revealed that the MPAA filed charges against Jon and his father Per, instigating the Norwegian Economic Crime Unit to ask Jon to answer questions at the police station in January 2000. His testimony revealed a flaw in the judge's thinking, who has previously stated in several opinions that the teen was arrested and has inferred guilt therefrom. Not only was Johansen never arrested for developing the software, the Norwegian government awarded Jon a prestigious award for his excellent grades in high school and his contribution to society for creating DeCSS. Although it did not come out in court today, the Norwegian parliament has also issued the young teen a formal apology for the treatment he has undergone as a result of publishing the code.
In stark contrast to the veracity and integrity Johansen displayed on the witness stand in the face of a powerful industry trying to crush him, the head of the MPAA's world-wide anti-piracy effort Mikhail Reider testified next. The MPAA investigator who was previously an intelligence officer for the DEA and FBI gave testimony replete with "I can't recall", "I don't know", and "I can't remember" to the most basic questions involving the MPAA's investigative efforts in this case, reminiscent of the Jack Valenti deposition. The credibility and truthfulness of this witness was called into further doubt when shown and asked about internal MPAA reports sent to her that contradicted her testimony and were obtained by EFF's defense team through discovery battles. At the conclusion of Reider's testimony, the Plaintiff's rested their case.
EFF's defense team called Edward Felton to the witness stand who is an expert on technology and testified for the Department of Justice in its case against Microsoft. Felton, who likened "hacking" to "tinkering" explained that the public is ultimately served by the disclosure of information learned from publishing the results of encryption research and security testing. He also testified to the expressive nature of object code and that he can read it and encourages his students to read and write it as part of their education. "In addition to executing it, you can learn a lot from it," stated one of the world's most highly respected computer experts.
Journalist and publisher of 2600 Magazine Eric Corley, who is more commonly known by his pen name, Emmanuel Goldstein took the stand in his own defense at the late afternoon and will return first thing Thursday morning at 9:00. Goldstein explained many of the important contributions to computer security, technology innovation, and the protection of privacy that his magazine was responsible for since its creation in 1984. He also described his extensive journalistic background which includes having been published in the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal among countless others and testifying before Congress on technology issues.
Judge Kaplan provided some sense of his thinking saying that Web publisher 2600.com had a reasonably strong case that the issuance a permanent injunction against it was a futile act due to the mass proliferation of the software. Fond of analogies, the judge stated the defense had a reasonably strong case for the proposition that the barn is unlocked and this horse is out. (See pulled quote from transcript below).
In response to questions regarding the movie studios' right to control who can make DVD players, the judge gave some indication that he believed the DMCA may over-rule antitrust law in the U.S., something to be found no where in the legislative history of the statute.
Thursday morning, Emmanuel Goldstein will complete his testimony with the cross examination of him by Proskaur lawyer Leon Gold. EFF's defense team also expects to call Matt Pavlovich, a developer of open source DVD player tools and Professor Peterson of Princeton University's Computer Science department to the stand.
>From trial transcript of July 20, 2000, Pages 670-1
17 Now, it seems to me also that what the MPAA wants is
18 a legal determination that unlocking this barn was illegal,
19 and so the next guy who considers unlocking another barn is
20 going to have something serious to think about. I suspect you
21 are also asking me to issue an injunction against the guy who
22 unlocked this barn not to unlock it again even though there is
23 no horse in it. So, you know, I don't know that this witness
24 has any light to shed on that subject.
Page 674:
6 courts have said for 300 years, at least that courts of
7 equity ought not to use the equitable power of injunction to
8 try to accomplish the impossible or to perform something which
9 is entirely futile, and therefore, in the exercise of
10 discretion, given the broad prevalence of this particular
11 utility, this time the court declines to issue the injunction
12 because it would do no practical good.
Transcript of today's hearing:
http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/MPAA_DVD_cases/2000
An index of the DVD updates can be found at:
http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/dvd_updates_archive
You can subscribe to EFF's mailing list to receive the regular
DVD updates. To subscribe, email
and put this in the body: subscribe cafe-news
EFF's archive of MPAA v 2600 litigation:
http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/MPAA_DVD_cases/
RELATED COVERAGE:
Norwegian Teenager Appears at Hacker Trial He Sparked
By Carl Kaplan, NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/07/cyber
(This is one of the best articles yet written about this case).
DVD-Hacker Trial Judge Says Horsefeathers to Movie Studios' Injunction Demands
By Greg Lindsay, Inside.com
http://www.inside.com/story/Story_Cached/0,2770
"Mary had a crypto key, she kept it in escrow, and everything that Mary said, the Feds were sure to know."
I have to speak personally here, as a musician - moreso as one that does not get paid. I do not create my art (music) for the hopes of getting paid for it. Money is not my "incentive" to create. I create because I am compelled to. I cannot not create. It is something metaphysical, something bigger than myself that drives my need to express myself. I don't do it for money.
That said, if I was getting paid for it, I could quit my day job and do a whole lot more of it. I would love to get paid for it. But that is not WHY I do it.
wish
---
Baloney!!! The reason that our culture goes anywhere is because future developments are built off of ideas that come before. This is like saying that "Just because you learned how to read doesn't mean that you should be able to write." Sadly, I don't know what the lowly unwashed masses can do to prevent this.