Slashdot Mirror
More Threats From The MPAA
MattLesko writes: "Looks like the MPAA is now even going after those who link to copies of DeCSS, flying high on the recent ruling in their favor. 2600 has a copy of the letter they are sending out here , along with the usual lucid comments that we've come to expect from Mr. Goldstein." Some Slashdot readers have already written to say that access to their e-mail accounts has been yanked by (academic) providers for linking to DeCSS from their home pages. Has it happened to you?
Lets pledge to not pay to view any movies produced by members of the MPAA. This might put a dent in their wallet and prevent them from hiring at least one lawyer.
My boycott will last until The Fellowship of the Ring movie is released.
If you are supposed to inform them of anyone who is linking to a site that links to DeCSS and so on, then do so.
Write a web crawler that looks for everone linking to X site. Then search for everyone linking to everyone who links to those site and so on. When you hit the threshold amount of your mail server (say 4-5 megs), send it to them and keep going.
Fairly soon, they will find out just how big that number is.
"What do you mean the MPAA is suing the *entire* Internet?"
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
I am now more convinved than before that what I did was the right thing to do.
To the MPAA, and all who would follow in their footsteps: you may not censor me .
Now is when I really want to see some of the ol' cyberpunk magic...c'mon, Chinese government, post everything American and copyrighted...now!
shouldn't you also be looking for the mpaa having the text http://www.2600.com or does that not count as a link. I would think it should as it gives a location to go to. Just a thought
JOIN !LINK CLUB!
The idea of the game is that you start at a web page of a competitor's choice and compete to find smut the fewest number of links away.
Bookmark pages, search engines, etc, are off limits as they make the game too easy.
It can also be found on gnutella.
--- If OS were buildings, then the first woodpecker to come around would erase 95 % of civilization.
What about linking to something which clearly isn't a "circumvention device". Change the line:
;))
typedef unsigned char byte;
near the top of css-descramble.c to:
typedef unsigned char bite_me;
The source code won't compile or run correctly, and is hence useless to anyone unless they know enough to change the line to something useful. (And, finding out on your own what the source code does, and making it compatible is illegal reverse-engineering, right?
Actually, the DMCA isn't legal. It doesn't deal at all with free speach, but it does effectively go beyond the powers of congress with regards to copyright as laid down by the constitution and several related laws. It completely eliminates fair use (effectively), denys people access to their property (I think that's another constitutional violation), and (IIRC) effectively makes copyright terms unlimited.
-RickHunter
It's probably too late for this to be read, but I've written a pair of perl scripts to encode a file be reordering the lines of a (different) text file. The scripts are available from the URL above, as is the css-descramble source encoded using the text of the DMCA.
--
--
Things are only impossible until they are not.
screw it, i'll link to it, explaining that i am linking to a sample of code that DOES NOT THWART A COPY PROTECTION SCHEME. because encryption != copy protection.
Here's my copy...
Click here to Get a Linux DVD player.
   ______________
  /DDD.V.....VDDD\
 /.D..D.V...V.D..D\
/..D..D..V.V..D..D.\
|..DDD....V...DDD..|
|......./XXX\......|
|.......|XOX|......|
|.......\XXX/......|
|..................|
\................../
 \................/
  \______________/
meept!
meept!
All of these people who are trying to keep DeCSS available by making it available for download and by linking to it should give up because the program itself is worthless now.
We can never give up the fight. This is no longer about technology or encrytpion, which you don't seem to understand. Judge kaplan doesn't seem to either. It will never matter later if we give up now. We can give up and let a bunch of greedy corporate entities bribe the goverment into treating us like shit. I, for one, don't intend to let that happen, and that's why I'm mirroring DeCSS.
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
The proper cryptographic access control for your DeCSS source code is this awesome thing called CSS.
The complications make me giddy. :-)
You mind if I send your letter to my congressman?
"Life is art...Paint your destiny"
Base 256 isn't all that different than any other base - you just need 256 different symbols to write numbers in it. So you can see right away that it just isn't practical. The guy who made that statement obviously doesn't know what he's talking about.
To say that anything on a computer is "just numbers" is dumb: of course it's "just numbers", but that's like saying that you're "just a number" - your social security number. Or like saying that you can't copyright a book because it's "just letters".
Of course, if you believe that copyrights are immoral or stupid (and therefore, that nobody has any right to get paid for what they might write), then the whole argument is moot. And people like that aren't likely to write anything useful anyway. (Here's hoping Eric Raymond isn't listening.)
I've been to dental school. Is there really that much of a difference?
Yes, you are not able to force someone to come in for a thorough reaming just by sending them a letter.
And when your a dentist, people willingly come to you for pain and suffering.
Well, I'd create a page, decss.html. I'd use the page to state my point of view on the issue and how upset I am that I can't distribute the source to be viewed by others. Then I'd place the entire source for the program in a comment on the HTML page...so you can get to the source by choosing...View Source. Fight the MPAA and enjoy a nice play-on-words at the same time!
Karma: Non-existant. Due mostly to the fact that you smell funny and nobody likes you.
This is an intentional link to DeCSS.
Any site that has advertisements most likely at some point links to some pages that link either to search engines or directly to illegal material. Whereas those themselves can be unintentional, and thus legal, my link above states that it is a link to DeCSS. Thus, my link is illegal.
Too bad we don't have DMCA in Finland.
Blah. Plain insanity.
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
Has anyone given any thought to the fact that trying to protest in a way that is archaic like seems to be happening is actually harmful?
Let's say that everyone wants to protest this, and actually will. Now, let's take just 2 of the solutions. Let's say 50% or more of the people decide that they want to fool the MPAA and have some fake program of some sort. Let's say that the other 50% actually wants to link to the code, through a search engine.
Anyone else realize that the noise ratio for someone actually wanting to find the code and distribute it themselves is going to be extremely high? I can see someone wading through 6 links deep to find the one that doesn't work any more, then giving up.
If a real protest has to be done, then it has to be done in an organized fashion. Otherwise it will probably do more harm than good. We would need to start an organization that does not go against the order themselves, but still protests actively. And, of course, holds copies of the code in a CD archive stashed in various places (in the ground, bank deposit box, etc).
> We are beginning a new age of corporate control over our lives and our very fundamental freedoms.
The "corporate control" has always been there, it has simply moved on from controlling land and factories to "Intellectual" property.
Thought I'd add this thought I had since other posts here seem related.
It seems the terrain in this battle could be altered significantly if server vulnerabilities were used to insert a file (mpaa.html or decss.html) into the root directory of a large number of servers across the net. (Alternately an otherwise invisible text link or transparent gif link in a bottom corner of the page might work as well, to find mirrors, like the PI character in the movie the Net). The html file could contain source and multiple executables of the DeCSS code, and this file could be given a variety of related names or placed in subfolders, stegographed into gifs, inserted into Javascript, encrypted with a public key, etc., so that it is less detectable by administrators and mpaa search engine investigators while promising an unending morph of target and terrain.
Maybe if the MPAA ever gives up the server admins would be notified of the security holes they have.. but I am thinking that admins might even intentionally add this to their own systems since they could say it was placed there by a hacker. Leaving a security hole open intentionally might be a plausible defense in that case.
This thought came to me when I was considering a perl script published in a well known network security secrets book. A friend inexperienced in perl or hacking tried offhand to test his clients' NT servers and suddenly was granted System permissions three times out of three, score 3 for linux. This seems a far more interesting game for script kiddies too, why bother defacing some clueless government's page when they could screw the MPAA instead. There is also less damage on the part of those defaced.
Why not spam the source code to millions of people worldwide? That would be fast and cheap, no?
...
Let me check for that Jack Valentines e-mail adress again
Violence -- Speech may not take the form of violence nor incite violence.
Property Damage -- Same as above.
Criminal Speech -- Some forms of speech are criminal in nature. Treason, conspiracy to commit a crime, etc.
Encroaching on the Rights of Others -- This is why pro-life protesters can be made to stop blocking a clinic.
Trespass -- Freedom of speech does not equal the right to speak wherever and whenever you want. I can't deliver a political (or otherwise) speech in your house without permission.
Forms of expression outside the First Amendment -- Libel and obscenity have been prohibited from the very beginning.
Burden on Government function -- This is the basis of upholding the law against burning draft cards.
Copyright violations -- The Constitutional right of copyright supercedes most Free Speech rights.
Speech containing sufficient nonspeech elements -- Here is where code is most affected. If you had actually read the ruling, you would've realized that over half the ruling deals with code as Free Speech and how it can be limited. The First Amendment does not mean that the government is powerless, and it is realms where a form of expression contains significant nonspeech elements, such as code, where the government typically has the most power to limit speech. While I certainly am not a constitutional scholar, I am at least familiar with:
United States vs. O'Brien (1969)
Chaplinsky vs. New Hampshire (1942)
Rowan vs. Post Office (1970) All three are excellent examples of the government limiting forms of expression and the Supreme Court backing them up. Research them sometime.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
One: Post the code on non-US servers. AFAIK US law still doesn't apply outside the US. Preferably choose countries where there is lots of anti-US feelings.
Two: Wouldn't it be fun if, say China or Iraq started to demand that the major hollywood sites must be shut down? Surely something there can be considered "illegal" somewhere in the world?
Or better yet. If it enough to have "offending" material on your site, a lot of brits might want to shut down sites that link to a certain movie with Mel Gibson?
All opinions are my own - until criticized
Somewhere Out There (I lost the link, but somebody 'll find it) is a guy who posted on his site a song about DeCSS (containing the algorithm). Give me a couple of days and I'll write a poem including it.
Somebody tried putting it on a t-shirt, but They caught on real quick and made him take them all back.
A song or a poem would get a lot farther. (The only hard parts are the data statements. (Maybe you could make those the chorus.
What's even more funny is that your version of DeCSS crashes MS Internet Explorer! IEXPLORE caused a stack fault in module MSHTML.DLL at 0177:70057cc1. Is this intentional??
An example would've been a link to 2600.com back when they actually hosted the code for purposes of linking to a hacker magazine. That would've have been illegal.
That wouldn't have been illegal.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Great idea! Everybody make a file (say, a jpg of a flower) somewhere on their site and call it DeCSS (and link to it).
Then again, I don't suppose they'd be bright enough to realize something as obvious as that, would they? :-)
Hopefully this story is dead enough so that there isn't any Slashdot effect, but we've put a bit of that kind of thought into www.datafetish.com. We are looking to build a library of encoded, esentially anonymous information. Is DeCSS up there? Well, let's just say we didn't bother to put up the one that removes Cascading Style Sheets from HTML. But, like PAD, MIME, gzip, and all other software that does some form of encoding, it is possible some algorithm will turn the bits on some page into either one of the DeCSS programs, or maybe even the source code to Microsoft Office 2000. Who knows? :-)
Sure, sure, I have all this stuff on my hard drive so feel free to request extra greps :) I expect wget to finish sometime today or tonight... or I hope it will anyway :P
Disclaimer: I am a lawyer, but I'm tired of putting up meaningful disclaimers. It's been a long, exhausting day, and I need a beer. If you want to act on what's in this message, go see a lawyer, licensed in your jurisdiction, who gives a crap.
I love the idea of reading it into the public record. If my hazy memory serves me, that's what happened with the Pentagon Papers back in the early 70s, and hell hath no fury like the Defense Department scorned. However, after it was read into the record, it was fair game. Then the journalists could report on it willy nilly without worrying about pesky security clearances and stolen documents.
The Speech and Debate Clause of the US Constitution protects Senators and Congresstypes from prosecution for acts taken in the course of official government proceedings (within reason). I'd love to see a Representative go to the well of the House and read DeCSS into the record. Maybe the EFF's lobbyists could try to pull that one off.
The unanimity of support for the DMCA can be broken by one Member of Congress who has the courage to stand up to the MPAA, RIAA and those who seek to congregate control over speech in the hands of faceless monopolistic multinational middlemen conglomerates.
Sheesh, it's definitely beer time. I reserve the right to retract all these statements after I've had two beers and an amount of sleep to be named later.
==
This post sponsored by the American Obstetrics Society:
The above is a similar idea to the fellow that made a program to remove cascading style sheets from HTML pages. He called it DECSS. IIRC he also got a letter from our friends. Think the university where this was hosted did pull the page. For a little while.
Kaplin's ruling just sucked. How soon is that appeal? MPAA and DVDCCA really need to grab a clue. All I want to to view my legaly pruchased DVDs on a platform other than Windoze.
Here's an idea. We could all start linking to DeMPAA.zip or Claddvd. The latter works much better than the original DeCSS.
Shameless plug:
Join the Cafe mailing list at eff.org. This has been the most worthwile mailing list I have ever subscribed to. It's low traffic, informative and exclusivly deals with RIAA, MPAA, DVDCCA, and Sony vs Conectix, etc. cases.
-- Spammers: My E-mail server is in California. Consider yourself warned.
...but only styrofoam lookalikes of clubs. These kinds of hoaxes will be quickly found out: the law office doesn't actually exist, or it does exist but doesn't know of the case, etc. Within days, service will be restored to the hoaxed users, and all it did was put lots of egg on the ISP's face. As the action continues, the omelette will spread to more and more ISPs, and ISPs will be increasingly weary of any legalese letter, especially if the claims are ludicrous (such as "links to links to links to links to DeCSS are illegal").
Going off topic, but...... If I link to the New York Times, that's no big deal, because when somebody follows the link, the NYT page comes up, full-screen. A problem area comes when, as MSFT did to a travel site a few years back (or the other way around), you frame your pages so that their content comes up surrounded by your identity.
This fight is indeed not about copying. Perfect bit-wise DVD copies are being made by the millions in Asia. This fight is about distribution control and price fixing. Maybe you guys remember regional coding. Maybe Americans may forget about it, but in Europe, where people have to wait 6 months longer for a new release to come out, we don't. As said before, the encryption key on the disc has to match the key in the player. This is a very easy way to control what players can play what discs. And like this they can keep disc prices in Europe higher than in the US.
http://www.domain.tld/DeCSS anyone?
Shame they are US based...
~ppppppppö
Sure - cryptographically split decss into 5 parts and host 5 parts of it on 5 different pages with a sixth as the key.
Give one piece to each of 5 friends to host, you host the key portion. Make a link to each site. No problem. Individually each person dosen't have decss. And their search engine should fail if it actually verifies the file.
However, I am not a lawyer. You are at your own risk.
greetings! i just got off the phone with Susan, (main mpaa number ext 343) who is a manager (i didnt ask which department). i was asking why certain individuals were being targeted with cease and desist letters while others were not. i also explained to her how the mpaa.org web site links (a series of links, 10) to the decss source itself. i also asked her if the mpaa was going to send cease and desist letters to itself and disney (goto.com). i invited her to read this story on slashdot and responses to get a clearer picture. she was friendly and was very interested in this discussion. she didn't know that through a series of links there are millions of law offending web sites out there (including most of the plaintiffs in the 2600 case). i'm hoping to infiltrate the mpaa employees with the truth so they can see how idiotic the mpaa's antics really are. cheers!
"What *about* those search engines?"
Obviously, the next step They will have to take is to make it illegal to search for DeCSS (today, DeCSS, tomorrow, ?). A simple modification to Carnivore, and everybody who searches for XXXX will get a knock on the door in the middle of the night.
Hmmmmmmm... glad to see I'm not the only one who noticed that point
According to that all I have to do is put a link to a search engine on my site, or link to a page that links to a page, that links to a page (that links to a page, and on and on...), that links to a search engine of some sort, and BANG! I've just created a series of links that allows the downloading of DeCSS.
I haven't checked the links the MPAA has on their web site, but I'm sure you can eventually get to the DeCSS code from at least one of them, may take a while but I'm sure you can... Personally, I'm waiting for them to go after Yahoo and the likes, after all they ARE linking o sites that provide DeCSS or links to sites that link (and so on...)
On a not quite so related note, I personally think it would be funny if a significantly large number of people provided links to this DeCSS (don't worry, nothing illegal about it) and just create a little background noise for the MPAA to have to sort through to get the sites that link to the other/real DeCSS.
-GreenHell
"I won't mod you down - I feel the need to call you a twit explicitly, rather than by implication."
Let's see...n et/World_Wide_Web/Sea rching_the_Web/Search_Engines/)
Lycos, and most of these...(taken from http://dir.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Inter
AltaVista
excite
HotBot
Google
Scrub The Web
Fast Search
Matilda
Direct Hit
Astalavista
Aesir Custom Search
Afghana!
Ahoy!
Airport Search Engine
Alku
All Academic
AllMortgageSearch.com
AllSmallBiz.com
AltaVista
AltaVista Australia
AltaVista Canada
Ananzi
Anzwers
Aqueous
Area 52
Arkansas Direct
AsiaStop
Astalavista
AusIndex
Aviation Search Engine from Totavia
BabyOIL
Bango.net
Bigstuff
Biochemistry Easy Search Tool (BEST)
BizAds Business Locator
Business Seek
Canadian Links
Cinemachine
Claymont.com
Clever Project
Clickey
Community-based Navigation
Company Site Locator
CompuServe@
Crafts Search
CurryGuide
Direct Hit
DIY Search
EgoSurf
El Faro
Electric Monk
EuroFerret
Euroseek
excite
Fast Search
Fido the Shopping Doggie
Fiji Search Engine
Fish4It
G-Spot
GeoIndex
Global Online Directory
Globe Page
Google
GoTo.com@
Heuréka
HotBot
iAtlas
Ibeau
ICQ iT!
In 2 Ireland
Inference Find
InfoBASIC
Infohiway
Informant Server, The
InfoTiger Search Engine
InfoZona
Irena
Italian Spider
James Kirk Search Engine
Kanoodle.com
keyword.com
Law Enforcement Links Directory & Police Search
Engine and Directory
LinkMaster
LuXPoint
Lycos
Magic the Gathering Search Engine
MagPortal.com
MasterSite
MathSearch
Matilda
Maxisearch
Mister Driver
MOSHIx2
MRO-Explorer
MSN Internet Search
Mug-O-Milk
MusicSearch
NationalDirectory
Netscape Search
Netword
News Hunt
Nordic Web Index
Northern Light@
Oingo
Open Text Web Index
PhilanthropySearch.com
PlanetClick
PlanetSearch
Poke!
Pollinia: Network Orchid Stuff - search engine that focuses on orchid-related web sites.
Pregnancy and Parenting Search Engine
Public Safety Search Engine
QuestFinder
Radar
Raging Search
Scour
Scrub The Web
Search Adobe PDF Online
Search Argos
Search By Media
Search King
Search NZ
Search.bg
Search.NL
Searching Satanism
SearchMil.com
Searchopolis
Searchport
SemioMap
Sesna
Simmany
SimpleSearch.com
Singingfish.com
Sitexplorer
Sourcebank
Spider's Apprentice, The
Sportsdogs.com
StreamSearch.com
Super Snooper
TechnoFind
TheLinks
Thunderstone
TopClick
Travel-Finder Spider
Ugabula
UKMax
United States of America Web Resource
Voila
WebDirect!
Webindex
Websurfer
WebTop.com
WestMichigan.com
What-U-Seek
whoizzy
World Access Internet Navigator
Worldwide Embassies and Consulates Search engine
WWWomen Search Directory
xrefer
Yam Web Navigator@
Yep
Zebra
ZenSearch
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
But seriously, if we're even THINKING about banning links based on copyright violations, then there goes the entire concept of the WWW. Can I sue for someone pointing at me? It's the same difference.
If I link to a page [that links to a page]* that links to a DeCss, am I in trouble?
If so, I'm removing my links to search engines...
Welcome to the collapse of 'civilized' society!
-- "Almost everyone is an idiot. If you think I'm exaggerating, then you're one of them."
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
However, as I understand it, the amendment only covers documents which themselves are subject to those copyright claims. I suppose the copyright to the DeCSS code belongs to Jon Johansen, and it would be up to him to file a complaint with Swedish authorities for disclosing his unpublished software and therefore causing him substantial financial damage.
The Secrecy Act still offers secrecy to documents the contents of which may assist in committing certain crimes (such as documents detailing security arrangements being used in preparation for burglary). It remains to be seen whether these clauses would apply to DVD region coding circumvention techniques.
But please don't bug the Swedish parliament with this, unless you want to trigger another amendment to the Secrecy Act. They have had enough of this insanity. Send it to the Consumer Ombudsman instead, as part of a very valid complaint regarding the marketing methods of certain corporate entities within the international music industry (though it would be best if you are a Swedish resident or national to make it look right).
When the complaint has been filed, take out a copy (anonymously, to make sure that no secrecy clause applies) and have someone publish it as well. In order to really play safe in Sweden, have it published in print rather than on the Internet, and it will be pretty much impossible for the MPAA to act against you.
IANAL. Your mileage will vary.
I can't imagine that linking becomes forbidden here in Holland, no way!!! Why sending that E-mail to the whole world? Do they really believe that US law is universal?
Bizar technology?
That pretty much outlaws the search engines - and probably pretty much the entire World Wide Web. Well, in America at least.
Let's hope some ISPs outside the USA turn round to MPAA and tell them where to go and stick it.
-- Soruk
it's in my auto reply though.. and this mail-account receives my spam ;)
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Or, as someone else said, change the variables, or make the source code into something different that performs the same. But go a step beyond that. Publish it. I mean really publish it. Send it to a magazine that will print it for you. Truly get it protected under the first amendment. Or talk to those obfuscated perl contest winners and have one write an obfuscated perl script that will output decss when it is run, and have that published. Write into the letters column of your local newspaper, magazines, any chance you have of getting it published, do so!
Another possibility is to loveletter the source code, either in original or modified form (Note: I do not, repeat NOT endorse this nor would i like to see it. I'm a network admin and do not, repeat NOT need that headache again. The though just occurred to me while writing this ). The more places the code is published or spread, the more the MPAA will have to sue. If it achieves loveletter status in mailing itself around the globe (what, just about every other computer in the world in under 24 hours?) the MPAA will have to send cease-and-desist letters to everyone. Including themselves.
Heck, if the source in under 6000 characters, send it into that French space-time capsule that will be up for 50000 years. If not, break it up amongst several people with instructions on how to reassemble the code. Convert it into as many other programming languages as possible, convert the variables into other languages. Write a mathematical equation that is answered with the decss code. The possibilities are endless for this type of civil disobedience. Remember, you (i.e. dedicated hackers) are the smart ones, not them. If they were, you wouldn't have cracked the encryption in the first place.
Rent some time on public access TV and spend the half hour or so teaching people how to compile the source code, and then tell them to tape your show, and halfway thru have the source scroll up the screen so they can type it in later on. Or just dictate it. All those old floppy disks that you've been itching to throw away? Copy the source onto that and some literature about the whole case and the evils of the MPAA and distribute it to people at political rallies.
It can be done. Hell, I'm stupid and look at all these ideas I came up with. Maybe someone smart can think of something that will actually work! -dj
`/\/\
(^.^)
(")(")
not quite an analog pussy, just a cat that plays with vinyl
Does this mean that a google can get THE LETTER for merely indexing links associated with the code and returning the results in a users search ?
Good point. We already have a precedent for that. Intel tried to "copyright" 586 (or was it 80586?). And failed.
-- Soruk
Encrypt it and use DMCPA against them for once. Make part of the "licence agreement to download" be that you have to agree not to sue before you can decrypt it. Heck, for added measure, use CSS to do the encryption. (Hmm - on second thought, no. That defeats the purpose since presumably the downloading person doesn't have DeCSS yet, that's why he's downloading it.)
Put it in seperate pieces, to be cat'ted together, with links to each piece.
Instead of putting it in text file form, make an obfuscated C program that prints it out as output. Have people run the C program.
In a "newspaper cut-out" fashion like they use in the movies, find a lot of image files from out on the 'net that have pictures of letters. (I'm sure if you look long enough, you can find some from different sites). Then, make a whole lot of image URLS that point at those letters to make a "cutout letter" version of DeCSS (Hmm, that could be fun.).
Make the link say, "This is not a link to DeCSS".
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Surely that would be illegal ??!!
If it is illegal, I wouldn't be suprised. Still, it makes me feel better knowing that my website (http://www.nerdnetwork.net) is hosted by an italian company that doesn't give a rats ass about american laws.
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
You are right in saying that a number is hard to copyright. However IMO copyright protects the work that got into the arranging the symbols that make up the number. As another post pointed out, a book can be copyrighted. A single letter cannot be copyrighted. The result of arranging the letters so that they make up a book is copyrightable.
---
---
"Multiple exclamation marks are a sure sign of a sick mind." (Terry Pratchett)
1. Create an MP3 of someone reading the DeCSS source code aloud with a Metallica or Dr. Dre song (the original, please, not a knockoff or Muzak version!) in the background.
2. Drop it onto both the MPAA's and RIAA's web sites. Make sure you put a link to the counterpart version on their home pages.
3. Sit back and watch the fun as they sue each other.
--
Someone you trust is one of us.
...but did you encode that GIF with a Unisys-licensed encoder?
tree, n: lump of wood with green things
Pretend that something especially witty is here. Thanks.
I've seen several comments on several articles
containing DeCSS links. Did the almighty
CmdrTaco get his love letter?
Woot w00t w007.
I'm sorry, but the logic here (or lack thereof) was causing me a headache-- can you explain:
The First Rule of Link Club is: you don't talk about !Link Club
and then
JOIN !LINK CLUB! spread the word...
1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.
They're doing more than linking to it - you can actually access the source code on a Deja HTTP server :)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/08/26/033024 9&mode=thread (link removed to appease MPAA)
http://bitter.imetatec.com/decss/
Respectfully,
The Motion Picture Association of America
Dear Sir or Madam,
I have a question for the MPAA: Why are you such a bunch of stupid fucks?
Sincerely, Kris Schneider.
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
So it's illegal to link to "any Internet web site," eh? Anyone still got a gopher server running? How about putting DeCSS in an LDAP server entry somewhere?
Talk about a "chilling effect." I'm freezing.
So you publish the DeCCS code leaving some semicolons, omitting some include file, or even bluntly putting comments around the whole source. The program won't even compile, so it can't decrypt anything either. I wonder what the MPAA would do...
I wonder what they'd do if I took random lines from a line-numbered uuencoded tarball and used that in my email sig file? :)
-- Soruk
I wonder if anybody has thought of taking a photo of the shirt and then posting that on their website ?
For those of you interested in actually organizing the movement against this and other content related intrusions, please join the DigitalContent listserv at:
http://www.egroups.com/group/DigitalCon tent
--
Chaosnetwork
OliverWillis.Com
An Operative with an Agenda
Since the obvious solution is too host these sites outside of USA. US Geeks could use the Brain Drain argument, to attack the DMCA. Just broadcast the fact that draconian law is driving high tech resources Offshore. The politicians will quickly change this policy if they can be made to believe that this is really happening.
if you're american, sending me mail is illegal... can't control an autoreply, can I?
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
>Now if only there was a link from mpaa.org to Warner Brothers, and so on up the ladder, they'd be illegal themselves...
:)
hmm.. you mean the link I just saw on their link-page?
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Might as well shut down the entire Internet. Is the RIAA going to use this to sue everyone who has ever written a single web page with a hyperlink to any other site?
Hmm.. that is an interesting idea. A non-violent "sit-in" on the internet. If enough people in the right places could be convinced to join in, how much of the internet could be "shut down" for a day? (with the nice "thank you" to the MPAA for bringing you this shutdown).
or what if I had just set my auto-reply? Oh wait... I have.. you can use above email address. :)
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
UUencode... ROT 13.. put in webpage comments...
"This uses the strong encryption of UUencode and ROT 13..."
But those are known encryption systems...
I don't see anything saying known encryption is exempt do you?
Ok.... So UUencode... ROT 13... and put in webpage comments...
I think I'll do that right now......
I don't actually exist.
by everyone including one 'hot' word in every email. (Letterbomb)
"..don't you eat that yellow snow."
This is something I haven't seen anyone mention: that is, the disgusting greed of the MPAA. The CSS is an attempt to ensure that studios are paid for every copy of a DVD. I do believe that one should get paid for ones work, but shouldn't there be a voluntary cutoff at some point? A point at which one might say "I've made enough money from XYZ, it doesn't matter if other people copy it and enjoy it without lining my pocket."
If anyone believes that propagation of DeCSS will put a serious dent in the revenues of the movie studios, I have some property on the Moon I would like to sell you. If anyone believes the extreme argument that DeCSS and widespread copying of DVDs will obliterate the market you must realize two things: the argument is a logical fallacy (read: slippery slope) and VHS was (and is!) quite a strong market despite the relative ease of copying tapes.
So, don't be fooled people. Although legally, the furor is over copyright issues, the ideology behind the MPAA is GREED.
i think somebody should look for a series of links from the mpaa page to a hosting site and send the mpaa letters
The coffee god lives!
Anybody up to the challenge of rewriting DeCSS as a stealthing encrypted polymorphic virus? It would be constantly changing, no one would need to link to it, it would reinstall itself on your machine automaticly.
Wonder if Norton and McAfee (or similar) would 'decide' not to include a fix for it?
make Linux, not Microsoft. sin(beast) = -0.809016994374947424102293417182819
Mail this with a check for a few billion dollars and, if you're lucky, you *might* get heard... What we need is a good media catcher; like a march or an act of God... Say your prayers; and MOVE OUT OF THE US. Phoenix (Japan; here I come)
Interestingly enough.. Both Outlook and Hotmail do just that.
So if I email Mr Kaplan 'Heres the decss source code.. www.decss.com, why not rip a dvd', and he opens it in Outlook.. is anyone breaking the law? He has a file that contains a delibrate attempt to pass on the circumvention device after all..
http://twitter.com/onion2k
http://212.1.130.85/~soruk/nothinghere. html
-- Soruk
This could work, in the UK, petitions to the Houses of Parliament are "read" into the public record. The US must have a similar procedure.
Recently a UK Animal Rights group used this idea to humiliate MPs who publicly supported fox hunting, they sent them petitions which they had to read into the public record even though they personally disagreed with the subject. It made the national news, and is also a pretty cool wetwork (Socially Engineered) Hack.
The wording of the petition should make broad appeals to US citizens about free speech / fair use etc, anything that could be used to attach an air of authority to it.
I've heard (never seen) that DeCSS is embedded in a broad spectrum of graphics on the web, so if that is the truth then would'nt it be possible for the MPAA to sue all who possess any of these graphics? I think it seems they would stoop to that level.
congress.sys corrupt. Revolution y\n ?
done already - visit:
http://www.lemuria.org/decssREMOVEME/
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
yes, it's been done already. :)
/.)
(probably 500 additional times now that it's been on
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
it doesn't advocate violence, nor indicate a target for any violence. It simply explains how one might commit violence. Like pr0n discribed as medical text, it survives in a loophole.
"..don't you eat that yellow snow."
Pardon me, I've not had nearly enough sleep lately.
Eric
These words cannot be interpreted just literally, or many things that aren't printing presses wouldn't be protected. The question that the legal system is trying to answer is "what resolution of this case is most consistent with the principles that Americans believe lie behind these words" and that question is oozing, pregnant, redolent of wiggle room.
But you are quite right that the Kaplan decision will be overturned. The American legal system derives general principles by successive approximation (as it must - at a small enough scale any bright line looks like a wide grey area), sometimes slowly and horribly wrong on individual cases, but it's always eventually gotten the right principle in place.
Very kewell! Let us know if the MPAA starts bugging you. Hope you get some good karma, your post is very interesting and "informative".
Visit DC2600
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
that guns are allowed in USA but not links.
Here is a link to decss in europe where source is still legal...
The MPAA doesn't have to sue. I would guess anyone with copyrighted material on a DVD could sue AOL. AOL wins, and a precident is set.
www.mpaa.org -> (via click to enter)
www.mpaa.org/home.htm ->
www.mpaa.org/relatedsites/ ->
www.privacyalliance.org/ -> (via 'Resources' in banner at top)
www.privacyalliance.org/resources -> (via link all the way at the bottom)
www.eff.org/ ->
www.eff.org/pub/Intellectual_property/Video/ ->
eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/DVD/ ->
eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/DVD/resources.html ->
eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/DVD/DeCSS/ ->
www.zpok.demon.co.uk/decss/ ->
www.zpok.demon.co.uk/decss/DeCSS.zip
Even better... gets you a copy of it!!! 11 degress of separation from www.mpaa.org to an actual copy of the DeCSS archive (only 10 to a list of mirrors of the code).
Eric
So the judge says search engines are not trespassing, since they do not link knowingly. So, I assume I can link to a search enigne without breaking this broken law. What if I link to a search engine, giving it a querystring in addition to the hostname? Like...
I could go on, but I won't. I assume this would be legal, right?
--frank[at]unternet.org
Yeah - IBM a corrupt organization ; now Ive heard it all. (Actually - IBM is a true and true innovator, their labs come out with something remarkable weekly). Plus they wrote their name using individual cells. thats kewl..
Harder.. Better.. Faster.. Stronger
Yes. Once again -- U.S. vs. O'Brien. The core of this Supreme Court case was O'Brien's argument that in burning the draft card as an act of protest, his actions took on First Amendment protections that superceded the 1965 amendment to the Selective Service act prohibiting the defacement and destruction of draft cards. This case was all about whether doing something illegal in an expressive manner as a means of protest made it legal. The clear precedent was established that, no, you cannot.
Thus, linking to DeCSS as a protest against the MPAA, which is exactly what 2600 was doing, is indeed not protected under the First Amendment according to Judge Kaplan's ruling. I disagree very strongly with the DMCA, but if you assume that it is indeed legal, then unfortunately you can only logically follow that linking in that fashion as protest is also illegal according to current case law.
Sucks, huh? I hope they find a good way to challenge DMCA itself. Kaplan really kind of glossed over that by saying that Congress must've considered the ramifications of the law and giving superficial supporting analysis. In math terms, DMCA was considered a postulate, not a theorem to be proven in its own right. Kind of ignores the whole purpose behind judicial review, doesn't it?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Robert-
----
This case is frequently brought up in cases like the DeCSS case, where nonspeech elements are important considerations and in the early commercial speech cases. This is the reason why
flipping over someone's car because you were "expressing" your happiness that the Bulls won the
championship game is still illegal.
----
True. But what are the non speech elements associated with distributing a text file? There simply aren't any conduct elements comparable with burning a govenment owned draft card or flipping a car (sigh). The case is far more similar to speech cases like the CDA where even a strong government interest in keeping porn away from youngsters could not justify a law which whose restrictions on indecent material were far milder than the judges order.
The judge cited cases because he had nothing else to work with, but there have been other cases involving things like schools attempting to ban messages on t-shirts, and appellate court rulings where the government was unsuccessful in stopping the posting of cryptographic source code that are by far more similar to the present case. I didn't see the judge spending any time distinguishing this case from those. I don't believe he could credibly do so.
But before we hang the judge out to dry, it's important to realize how limited his ruling really is. It is an injunction aimed at a specific organization (and those working in concert with them). Such injunctions can and do contain bans on things that are not necessarily illegal, but that are designed to keep the injoined party from doing illegal things.
The MPAA is presenting the judge's preliminary injunction on 2600 as a more general restriction on everyone else. My ISP is Time Warner. I have no illusions about what they'll do if they get one of those threatening letters.
Does this make it right? Just because nine people say that I cannot say what I want to does not mean that they're right.
Freedom of speech is not something the government can take away. It is an inalienable right, granted by the fact that you exist.
Why do governments want to treat rights like privaledges? Because it limits freedom, making it easier for them to sieze more power. If they ilegalize treasonous speech, they undermine any attempt at rebellion.
I still liked it better 10-15 years ago when the land of computers and technology were still for nerds/geeks only and the US Judicial system & Corporations didn't care about it.
-brain
Yeah, I saw it too, after my post, but it doesn't look like it goes "...on up the ladder..." Too bad...
Internet Explorer was unable to link to the Web page you requested. The page might use standard HTML or CSS.
Not going to work if the MPAA takes it seriously. Because of American pressure, the Swedish government passed (without hardly telling the people) a change to the Freedom of Information laws in the constitution in order to make Co$ happy.
I would get a link but the blurbs in the press were so tiny I doubt they even made it online...
Each and every packet has a bit of empty space, ie: a bit of overhead. I encourage you to hack your drivers to place snippets of code in that empty space to be written out of your host in sequential order with every packet you send out.
Reassembly would probably be a beast, though the MPAA is not capable of suing the owners of every network transport host on the net.
...something tells me that if the MPAA wouldnt stand a chance against the big Network Service Providers and Telecom corps of the world.
chris
This communication is secured using Rot-26 Encryption Algorithm, Unauthorized decryption will be subject to laughter.
Care about freedom?
I'd rather be lucky than good.
how about we use css_descramble.c as an encryption key? just another silly idea...
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Better yet, just encode the DeCSS code with CSS.
If the MPAA bothers you about distributing the content, ask what proof they have. If they say they decrypted it, you can happily point to the relevant portions of the DMCA and tell them that they illegally circumvented an access control device for copyrighted content, and to expect a letter from your lawyer.
I say turnabout is fair play with regard to the MPAA and the DMCA.
--
Now, the Evil premise in there is that anyone is entitled profits to begin with: who owes them any profit? If these industries are entitled the use of governmental force to keep or increase their profits, then so are customers! Customers have an interest in keeping and increasing the amount of cheap or free music, movie, information, etc, available to the public at large. Thus, the obvious move is to launch a class action suit as a counter-action, with every single real or potential customer of music, movie theater ticket, etc, sueing these industries for damages. Every single cent that was overcharged because of current monopolies can be claimed back as damage. Multiply $1000 of damages plus interest by 500 000 000 viewers worldwide, and destroy the robbers.
-- Faré @ TUNES.org
-- Faré @ TUNES.org
Reflection & Cybernet
To the Southern District of New York? I was under the impression that federal court rulings only applied to the district they were issued in (see the Bernstein case and other crypto cases). In which case, I would think most of these letters would have no standing (if mailed outside the Southern District of New York). Jon
There's probably a market for a straightforward player with better features. Like skipping the mandatory commercials on Disney disks. Or making a file of thumbnails, one per scene change, as a index to the disk. Or extracting and indexing the closed-captioning information. None of those is a circumvention of copy protection, or a copyright violation. They're useful features a PC-based player ought to have.
I fired up Gnapster just for the hell of it and you know what? It's there! As of now 11 people offer descramble.mp3 in all its glory. Shame it's mono.
This function is void
And it takes two args...
Say... someone could get Prince to sing it? In its current incarnation it's a Bob-Dylanesque ballad, but I'm sure The Artist Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly Known As Prince could get it some groovy treatment. AND it seems he's no big friend of megacorps nowadays.
I think that slashdot has been fairly about their position on DeCSS has been pretty clear. They are against what MPAA is trying to do. In fact they seem pretty proud of being named in the "other" DeCSS suit. If I had thought I was working against their wishes, I never would have posted the link.
I think that MPAA would be foolish to go after the likes of slashdot at this point, and they know it. As long they can keep the spin on this case that its the nasty hackers versus the poor film makers they are in good shape. But slashdot is quasi-news cite with a somewhat more "respectable" (ha) readership, and slashdot is owned by a fair sized company (not nearly as big as the companies that own the film studios, but big enough). If the MPAA went after slashdot, the uproar from third parties like the New York Times would only increase. The key to defeating these unjust laws is make it clear how ludicrous they are, so the PR battle is important.
Anyway, the key to successful disobedience is to make it widespread. I don't think that simply fighting the case in court is the way to go. Many people fighting it on the web will much more effective. Posting links on my own little site that no one visits is not effective. The links need to be somewhere that they get attention.
Preventive War is like committing suicide for fear of death. - Otto Von Bismarck
http://www.cubicmetercrystal.com/decss/
/*
, 0x36,0x2b,0x6e,0x2e,0x66,0x7b,
, 0xd6,0x0b,0x4e,0x0e,0x46,0x9b,
, 0x52,0x8f,0xca,0x8a,0xc2,0x1f,
, 0xd0,0x01,0x48,0x08,0x40,0x91,
, 0x34,0x25,0x6c,0x2c,0x64,0x75,
, 0xd4,0x05,0x4c,0x0c,0x44,0x95,
, 0x50,0x81,0xc8,0x88,0xc0,0x11,
, 0xd2,0x0f,0x4a,0x0a,0x42,0x9f,
, 0x56,0x8b,0xce,0x8e,0xc6,0x1b,
, 0xb6,0xab,0xee,0xae,0xe6,0xfb,
, 0x32,0x2f,0x6a,0x2a,0x62,0x7f,
, 0xb0,0xa1,0xe8,0xa8,0xe0,0xf1,
, 0x54,0x85,0xcc,0x8c,0xc4,0x15,
, 0xb4,0xa5,0xec,0xac,0xe4,0xf5,
, 0x30,0x21,0x68,0x28,0x60,0x71,
, 0xb2,0xaf,0xea,0xaa,0xe2,0xff
, 0x0b,0x0a,0x0d,0x0c,0x0f,0x0e,
, 0x19,0x18,0x1f,0x1e,0x1d,0x1c,
, 0x2f,0x2e,0x29,0x28,0x2b,0x2a,
, 0x3d,0x3c,0x3b,0x3a,0x39,0x38,
, 0x42,0x43,0x44,0x45,0x46,0x47,
, 0x50,0x51,0x56,0x57,0x54,0x55,
, 0x66,0x67,0x60,0x61,0x62,0x63,
, 0x74,0x75,0x72,0x73,0x70,0x71,
, 0x99,0x98,0x9f,0x9e,0x9d,0x9c,
, 0x8b,0x8a,0x8d,0x8c,0x8f,0x8e,
, 0xbd,0xbc,0xbb,0xba,0xb9,0xb8,
, 0xaf,0xae,0xa9,0xa8,0xab,0xaa,
, 0xd0,0xd1,0xd6,0xd7,0xd4,0xd5,
, 0xc2,0xc3,0xc4,0xc5,0xc6,0xc7,
, 0xf4,0xf5,0xf2,0xf3,0xf0,0xf1,
, 0xe6,0xe7,0xe0,0xe1,0xe2,0xe3
, 0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,
, 0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,
, 0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,
, 0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,
, 0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,
, 0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,
, 0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,
, 0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,
, 0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,
, 0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,
, 0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,
, 0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,
, 0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,
, 0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,
, 0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,
, 0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,
, 0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,
, 0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,
, 0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,
, 0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,
, 0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,
, 0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,
, 0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,
, 0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,
, 0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,
, 0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,
, 0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,
, 0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,
, 0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,
, 0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,
, 0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,
, 0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff
, 0x50,0xd0,0x30,0xb0,0x70,0xf0,
, 0x58,0xd8,0x38,0xb8,0x78,0xf8,
, 0x54,0xd4,0x34,0xb4,0x74,0xf4,
, 0x5c,0xdc,0x3c,0xbc,0x7c,0xfc,
, 0x52,0xd2,0x32,0xb2,0x72,0xf2,
, 0x5a,0xda,0x3a,0xba,0x7a,0xfa,
, 0x56,0xd6,0x36,0xb6,0x76,0xf6,
, 0x5e,0xde,0x3e,0xbe,0x7e,0xfe,
, 0x51,0xd1,0x31,0xb1,0x71,0xf1,
, 0x59,0xd9,0x39,0xb9,0x79,0xf9,
, 0x55,0xd5,0x35,0xb5,0x75,0xf5,
, 0x5d,0xdd,0x3d,0xbd,0x7d,0xfd,
, 0x53,0xd3,0x33,0xb3,0x73,0xf3,
, 0x5b,0xdb,0x3b,0xbb,0x7b,0xfb,
, 0x57,0xd7,0x37,0xb7,0x77,0xf7,
, 0x5f,0xdf,0x3f,0xbf,0x7f,0xff
1 9);*/
;
1 9);*/
;
* css_descramble.c
*
* Released under the version 2 of the GPL.
*
* Copyright 1999 Derek Fawcus
*
* This file contains functions to descramble CSS encrypted DVD content
*
*/
/*
* Still in progress: Remove the use of the bit_reverse[] table by recoding
* the generation of LFSR1. Finish combining this with
* the css authentication code.
*
*/
#include
#include
#include "css-descramble.h"
typedef unsigned char byte;
/*
*
* some tables used for descrambling sectors and/or decrypting title keys
*
*/
static byte csstab1[256]=
{
0x33,0x73,0x3b,0x26,0x63,0x23,0x6b,0x76,0x3e,0x7e
0xd3,0x93,0xdb,0x06,0x43,0x03,0x4b,0x96,0xde,0x9e
0x57,0x17,0x5f,0x82,0xc7,0x87,0xcf,0x12,0x5a,0x1a
0xd9,0x99,0xd1,0x00,0x49,0x09,0x41,0x90,0xd8,0x98
0x3d,0x7d,0x35,0x24,0x6d,0x2d,0x65,0x74,0x3c,0x7c
0xdd,0x9d,0xd5,0x04,0x4d,0x0d,0x45,0x94,0xdc,0x9c
0x59,0x19,0x51,0x80,0xc9,0x89,0xc1,0x10,0x58,0x18
0xd7,0x97,0xdf,0x02,0x47,0x07,0x4f,0x92,0xda,0x9a
0x53,0x13,0x5b,0x86,0xc3,0x83,0xcb,0x16,0x5e,0x1e
0xb3,0xf3,0xbb,0xa6,0xe3,0xa3,0xeb,0xf6,0xbe,0xfe
0x37,0x77,0x3f,0x22,0x67,0x27,0x6f,0x72,0x3a,0x7a
0xb9,0xf9,0xb1,0xa0,0xe9,0xa9,0xe1,0xf0,0xb8,0xf8
0x5d,0x1d,0x55,0x84,0xcd,0x8d,0xc5,0x14,0x5c,0x1c
0xbd,0xfd,0xb5,0xa4,0xed,0xad,0xe5,0xf4,0xbc,0xfc
0x39,0x79,0x31,0x20,0x69,0x29,0x61,0x70,0x38,0x78
0xb7,0xf7,0xbf,0xa2,0xe7,0xa7,0xef,0xf2,0xba,0xfa
};
static byte lfsr1_bits0[256]=
{
0x00,0x01,0x02,0x03,0x04,0x05,0x06,0x07,0x09,0x08
0x12,0x13,0x10,0x11,0x16,0x17,0x14,0x15,0x1b,0x1a
0x24,0x25,0x26,0x27,0x20,0x21,0x22,0x23,0x2d,0x2c
0x36,0x37,0x34,0x35,0x32,0x33,0x30,0x31,0x3f,0x3e
0x49,0x48,0x4b,0x4a,0x4d,0x4c,0x4f,0x4e,0x40,0x41
0x5b,0x5a,0x59,0x58,0x5f,0x5e,0x5d,0x5c,0x52,0x53
0x6d,0x6c,0x6f,0x6e,0x69,0x68,0x6b,0x6a,0x64,0x65
0x7f,0x7e,0x7d,0x7c,0x7b,0x7a,0x79,0x78,0x76,0x77
0x92,0x93,0x90,0x91,0x96,0x97,0x94,0x95,0x9b,0x9a
0x80,0x81,0x82,0x83,0x84,0x85,0x86,0x87,0x89,0x88
0xb6,0xb7,0xb4,0xb5,0xb2,0xb3,0xb0,0xb1,0xbf,0xbe
0xa4,0xa5,0xa6,0xa7,0xa0,0xa1,0xa2,0xa3,0xad,0xac
0xdb,0xda,0xd9,0xd8,0xdf,0xde,0xdd,0xdc,0xd2,0xd3
0xc9,0xc8,0xcb,0xca,0xcd,0xcc,0xcf,0xce,0xc0,0xc1
0xff,0xfe,0xfd,0xfc,0xfb,0xfa,0xf9,0xf8,0xf6,0xf7
0xed,0xec,0xef,0xee,0xe9,0xe8,0xeb,0xea,0xe4,0xe5
};
static byte lfsr1_bits1[512]=
{
0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x24
0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x24
0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x24
0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x24
0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x24
0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x24
0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x24
0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x24
0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x24
0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x24
0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x24
0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x24
0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x24
0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x24
0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x24
0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x24
0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x24
0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x24
0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x24
0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x24
0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x24
0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x24
0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x24
0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x24
0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x24
0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x24
0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x24
0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x24
0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x24
0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x24
0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x24
0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x24
};
/* Reverse the order of the bits within a byte.
*/
static byte bit_reverse[256]=
{
0x00,0x80,0x40,0xc0,0x20,0xa0,0x60,0xe0,0x10,0x90
0x08,0x88,0x48,0xc8,0x28,0xa8,0x68,0xe8,0x18,0x98
0x04,0x84,0x44,0xc4,0x24,0xa4,0x64,0xe4,0x14,0x94
0x0c,0x8c,0x4c,0xcc,0x2c,0xac,0x6c,0xec,0x1c,0x9c
0x02,0x82,0x42,0xc2,0x22,0xa2,0x62,0xe2,0x12,0x92
0x0a,0x8a,0x4a,0xca,0x2a,0xaa,0x6a,0xea,0x1a,0x9a
0x06,0x86,0x46,0xc6,0x26,0xa6,0x66,0xe6,0x16,0x96
0x0e,0x8e,0x4e,0xce,0x2e,0xae,0x6e,0xee,0x1e,0x9e
0x01,0x81,0x41,0xc1,0x21,0xa1,0x61,0xe1,0x11,0x91
0x09,0x89,0x49,0xc9,0x29,0xa9,0x69,0xe9,0x19,0x99
0x05,0x85,0x45,0xc5,0x25,0xa5,0x65,0xe5,0x15,0x95
0x0d,0x8d,0x4d,0xcd,0x2d,0xad,0x6d,0xed,0x1d,0x9d
0x03,0x83,0x43,0xc3,0x23,0xa3,0x63,0xe3,0x13,0x93
0x0b,0x8b,0x4b,0xcb,0x2b,0xab,0x6b,0xeb,0x1b,0x9b
0x07,0x87,0x47,0xc7,0x27,0xa7,0x67,0xe7,0x17,0x97
0x0f,0x8f,0x4f,0xcf,0x2f,0xaf,0x6f,0xef,0x1f,0x9f
};
/*
*
* this function is only used internally when decrypting title key
*
*/
static void css_titlekey(byte *key, byte *im, byte invert)
{
unsigned int lfsr1_lo,lfsr1_hi,lfsr0,combined;
byte o_lfsr0, o_lfsr1;
byte k[5];
int i;
lfsr1_lo = im[0] | 0x100;
lfsr1_hi = im[1];
lfsr0 = ((im[4] >8)&0xff] >16)&0xff]>24)&0xff];
combined = 0;
for (i = 0; i >1;
lfsr1_lo = ((lfsr1_lo&1)>7)^(lfsr0>>10)^(lfsr0>>11)^(lfsr0>>
o_lfsr0 = (((((((lfsr0>>8)^lfsr0)>>1)^lfsr0)>>3)^lfsr0)>>7)
lfsr0 = (lfsr0>>8)|(o_lfsr0>= 8;
}
key[4]=k[4]^csstab1[key[4]]^key[3];
key[3]=k[3]^csstab1[key[3]]^key[2];
key[2]=k[2]^csstab1[key[2]]^key[1];
key[1]=k[1]^csstab1[key[1]]^key[0];
key[0]=k[0]^csstab1[key[0]]^key[4];
key[4]=k[4]^csstab1[key[4]]^key[3];
key[3]=k[3]^csstab1[key[3]]^key[2];
key[2]=k[2]^csstab1[key[2]]^key[1];
key[1]=k[1]^csstab1[key[1]]^key[0];
key[0]=k[0]^csstab1[key[0]];
}
/*
*
* this function decrypts a title key with the specified disk key
*
* tkey: the unobfuscated title key (XORed with BusKey)
* dkey: the unobfuscated disk key (XORed with BusKey)
* 2048 bytes in length (though only 5 bytes are needed, see below)
* pkey: array of pointers to player keys and disk key offsets
*
*
* use the result returned in tkey with css_descramble
*
*/
int css_decrypttitlekey(byte *tkey, byte *dkey, struct playkey **pkey)
{
byte test[5], pretkey[5];
int i = 0;
for (; *pkey; ++pkey, ++i) {
memcpy(pretkey, dkey + (*pkey)->offset, 5);
css_titlekey(pretkey, (*pkey)->key, 0);
memcpy(test, dkey, 5);
css_titlekey(test, pretkey, 0);
if (memcmp(test, pretkey, 5) == 0) {
fprintf(stderr, "Using Key %d\n", i+1);
break;
}
}
if (!*pkey) {
fprintf(stderr, "Shit - Need Key %d\n", i+1);
return 0;
}
css_titlekey(tkey, pretkey, 0xff);
return 1;
}
/*
*
* this function does the actual descrambling
*
* sec: encrypted sector (2048 bytes)
* key: decrypted title key obtained from css_decrypttitlekey
*
*/
void css_descramble(byte *sec,byte *key)
{
unsigned int lfsr1_lo,lfsr1_hi,lfsr0,combined;
unsigned char o_lfsr0, o_lfsr1;
unsigned char *end = sec + 0x800;
#define SALTED(i) (key[i] ^ sec[0x54 + (i)])
lfsr1_lo = SALTED(0) | 0x100;
lfsr1_hi = SALTED(1);
lfsr0 = ((SALTED(4) >8)&0xff] >16)&0xff]>24)&0xff];
sec+=0x80;
combined = 0;
while (sec != end) {
o_lfsr1 = lfsr1_bits0[lfsr1_hi] ^ lfsr1_bits1[lfsr1_lo];
lfsr1_hi = lfsr1_lo>>1;
lfsr1_lo = ((lfsr1_lo&1)>7)^(lfsr0>>10)^(lfsr0>>11)^(lfsr0>>
o_lfsr0 = (((((((lfsr0>>8)^lfsr0)>>1)^lfsr0)>>3)^lfsr0)>>7)
lfsr0 = (lfsr0>>8)|(o_lfsr0>= 8;
}
}
Why do US Organisations always think, that their legeslation and court-orders etc. are valid all over the world !?
hi,
:-(
;)
in germany we started an Online-Demonstration against Link-Lawsuits etc.
In Europe "Explorer" is a trademark (not of Microsoft!!!) and the owner throws lawsuits against people, which creates links to FTP-Explorer => http://www.ftpx.com (really!)
We started to collect signs against this and to talk to the government etc.
you may have a look on http://www.online-demon stration.org/alink/unterschrift.html to sign or on http://www.online-demons tration.org/alink/hintergrund.html for more infos.
Sorry, the Online-Demo is german only at this time. We will create also an englosh version and the possibility to create own demonstrations. Later
Bye,
Alvar
--
ODEM.org Tour (about censorship)
are you talking about standalone players that you hook up to the TV, or players for the computer?
what would be the point of dvd and a standalone player if the outputquality is crippled?
and what would be the point of crippling the video signal for a computer, if the computer can read the digital data directly, and do it's own decryption and create a good signal without the help of the player?
greetings, eMBee.
--
Gnu is Not Unix / Linux Is Not UniX
What if I received a spam email in my hotmail account with a link to DeCSS source? Isnt hotmail providing me a link through their website to DeCSS? I know its not publically available, but what If everyone was spammed. Hotmail should have made reasonable attempts to stop their clients from seeing an illegal link. --
-- Cheer, Cheer, The Red and the White.
Okay, this deserves a response.
Have you ever considered the fact that the only reason you have this right is because another group of people deemed it so? Previous to the creation of the Bill of Rights, no government has such "inalienable" rights for its citizens. This supposedly intrinsic right that everyone supposedly gets by existing did not exist before that except in the rhetoric of natural law philosophers such as Locke.
Don't fool yourself. All rights are priviledges that other people extend to one another. There are no intrinsic human rights -- not even the right to be born anymore. It may not be too long before medical science allows the right to die to be taken away.
While I believe that the DMCA is a seriously bad piece of legislation, Kaplan's words in the ruling rang very true -- that the First Amendment is not a suicide pact for the government. Would you really like to live in a country where people were free to fire-bomb houses and roll over cars without impunity because it is a form of expression? Would you really like to live in a country that couldn't have ruled in favor of the government in Rowan vs. U.S. Post Office; a country where the government cannot stop commercial advertisers from forcing junk mail on you even after telling them you don't want it? Would you really like to live in a country where the expressiveness of an act could be used to justify any criminal action?
"Your honor, I am suing because his throwing me out of his house squelched my freedom to speak about the wonders of my church."
"Your honor, I realize that those secrets about nuclear weapon design could hurt the U.S. if passed into the wrong hands, but it is my right to tell them to whoever I want, wherever I want, and whenever I want."
"Your honor, there is nothing illegal about telling a group of people, even a violently upset group, to kill that black man. That they did it is their problem, not mine."
"Yes your honor, Company X was the original author of that piece of software, but there's nothing wrong with freely copying it, is there? After all, code is a form of speech. So what if it took them 3 years and millions of dollars to research? They should've invested some of that money in better server security. My freedom of speech supercedes their ownership."
"Your honor, my forcing of affections on the young lady over there were merely a positive expression of her good looks."
The fact is that all of the above examples are things that our government system -- the one that originated this "inalienable" right -- does rightfully reject each and every one of those arguments. Oh, and by the way, treasonous speech is illegal. Check the Constitution itself. However, rich case histories have shown that even Communist philosophers speaking of the overthrowing the American capitalist system were well within their rights to do so. (Gitlow vs. New York 1925) How do you think that square with the rich history of protest speech in America?
I swear, some people should get off their "inalienable" rights soapboxes and do some research on how the real world actually works.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
But what are the non speech elements associated with distributing a text file?
No, code itself contains significant nonspeech elements. Code is inherently a functional "machine" of sorts as well as being a method of communicating to humans how to make a computer go about a task. It is both a description of a task and the task itself. Thus code itself may be regulated. That is the argument here.
In the case of other forms of illegal speech, such as libel and obscenity, it doesn't matter what the transmission method is, such as "distributing a text file." It's the speech itself that is illegal, and the distribution of it can also be made illegal. This is the unfortunate case with the DMCA.
The judge cited cases because he had nothing else to work with, but there have been other cases involving things like schools attempting to ban messages on t-shirts, and appellate court rulings where the government was unsuccessful in stopping the posting of cryptographic source code that are by far more similar to the present case. I didn't see the judge spending any time distinguishing this case from those. I don't believe he could credibly do so.
Actually, in any case where you are potentially going up against the legal cannon that is the First Amendment, you have to really shore up your defense with precendents like US vs. O'Brien. Kaplan did acknowledge Bernstein vs. US DOJ, where the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that current crypto export legislation was unlawful prior restraint on code as a form of speech. It was with this in mind that he spent 40+ pages dealing with the legal justifications of restricting code in light of its speech elements. That's why he spent significant time covering the validity of censoring code under its non-speech elements.
But before we hang the judge out to dry, it's important to realize how limited his ruling really is.
It's unfortunately worse than you think. The American court system is riddled with precedents. Any significant ruling in a case that tests a law contains exhaustive reference to the judgements of other judges, not necessarily all at the federal level. Kaplan's ruling affirming the DMCA may lead to a whole new level of legislation restricting our actions. The injunctions you refer to were covered previously in the case. The ruling is something else entirely. Punitive damages have been awarded to the MPAA. Round one is already lost. We just have to see if we can survive round two.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Just send a mail to registrator@justice.ministry.se
/take
requiering the following letter "maktmissbruk av MPAA i Sverige" by "Take Knol"
Include your snailmail addres and a deadtree copy will dimp in your letterbox a few days later.
Thanks to "tackhead" for the idea, and Anders A for sending me the info that he got his copy this way.
Now it's just waiting how long it takes untill MPAA notice, then we are up to a nice fight in Sweden if it's alloud to post this nice bit of code.
Am I legally obligated to comply with a cease & desist letter delivered via email, in plain text, with no digital signature, and no other way to verify the veracity of the order?
Edith Keeler Must Die
Everyone ought to get their friends to do so as well.
The cake is a pie
No, but your post is.
Hmmm, what if I am an artist and I incorporate the DeCSS code in a painting?
What if I encrypted the code with a pathetic encryption scheme that anyone can break (ASCII Code + 1) and then sue the MPAA if they try to figure out what lies behind the encrypted file?
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
Screw the MPAA. I've taken all I can of the crap they spew out. The good movies are all done by independents anyway. If I wear a shirt with mirror sites can I be sued? If I wear a shirt with the source code on a webcast, can I be sued?
IF I TATTOO IT ON MY ASS, CAN I BE SUED?
I'd like to see them sue me. I study case law. I study Constitutional law and cases. Bring it right the hell on.
-------------------------------------------------
And don't forget Google's web page caching facility. Its going to maintain that page for a good long time...
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
They can't do anything about sites hosted outside the U.S. anyway.
Today at work I went and found the source simply by searching for css.descramble.c on Google, forced it to fit onto a single sheet of paper (it is still legible), made 300 copies, and tonight I'm going to post them all around Boston.
Could I get in trouble for this? What if just 10 other people in every major US city started doing the same? The police have better things to do around here than read flyers that people are hanging up.
Racket
The strength of us all could have demolished the wall, but you chose to walk through the door.
Worst. Now you can get busted for linking to a singing version of a link to DeCSS.
[Accompanied by some random guitar chords...]
Ayyytch teeteepee colon slash slash
net firms dot com, slash
see essess, dash ayutee aytch
dot tar dot geezeeeeeeee!
I can create an account and post the DeCSS code in about 2 minutes, and the juducial system would take 3 months to remove it. In that time,
30*60*60*24*90=
233,280,000 new pages, all with DeCSS code could be put up by me. How are they planning to stop it when developers all around the world are plastering it on the web faster than they can take it down? As much as the MPAA would like to think, they cannot stop DeCSS. Can they confiscate my DeCSS shirt? Not without a warrant. How long does a warrant take to get? A lot longer than it takes to e-mail the source to everyone I know for safe keeping. The MPAA needs to realize that no matter how fast they think they are, developers are faster. DeCSS cannot be stopped, no matter how hard they try.
"You'll die up there son, just like I did!" - Abe Simpson
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
I have been thinking about this one for a while, guess it is time to try it.
Step 1. Post a web page named DeCSS, with DeCSS in the URL and some general information on the page that explains in great detail that the DeCSS code does not exist on that page. Also, no links to the DeCSS program on the page either.
Step 2. Sit back an wait to see how long the MPAA clueless train takes to fire off a letter.
Modified hack, have a link on the page to an empty file. Explain that it is an empty file. Goto Step 2.
Visit DC2600
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Th_ Unit__ _tat__ wa_ on__ a fr__ _ountry, but not anymor_.
matt
[This message edited by the MPAA.]
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
I wonder how many spooks, cops, and hired goons (if there is any real difference...) are willing to end up with their brains on the walls to keep a few geeks from watching movies under Linux..
(which all in all is a moot point since there are no funcitonal MPEG players that even begin to run under Linux...)
---
Play Six Pack Man. I
Hypothetical situation...
I write an e-mail to a friend talking to him about the DeCSS. In that e-mail I write the URL which outlook automaticaly turn into an hyperlink my friend can click. Am I in trouble? Or is it Microsoft's fault??
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear"
I was reading through the letter, in the section where it says:
First of all, define 'circumvent'. It my knowledge, the code used in DeCSS was writting by reverse-engineering CSS encoded data and such; Does this mean that anything that is clean-room'ed is 'circumventing' or illegal? In my mind, circumventing is like finding a way around (cira = 'around') a certian thing. DeCSS just decrypts the data in the same way any other program or DVD player does. It's not like you stole someones private key or anything. I have some friends why reverse-engineered the protocol for Nokia-to-PC communication -- have they 'Circumvented' it? Are they in the wrong? or is circumvention just a big word meaning "They didn't ask us for permission first"?
Going on this, though, I take that to mean that anything that can decode DeCSS encoded data is in violation; Including every DVD player ever made. of course, thats silly to think; the DVD-CCA then has Carde-banche to decide whether a company is fairly using CSS Decryting code or if they are circumventing it; they could just say company XXX's DVD player is illegalling decrypting DVDs, and therefore putting company XXX out of business -- and I'm Sure DVD-CCA Execs are not above accepting bribes from big name companies that don't want competition.
Oh, yeah, and the next part of my Rant. There is the line "linking any Internet web site, either directly or through a series of links" in there. Which means that if you link to a site, and they link to another site, etc, and someone down the line has a DeCSS link, are you all therefore breaking the law? Hell, even the MPAA web site had a link to 2600.com for quite a while.
I'll shut up now.
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
Or go to every free web provider you can find and post the DeCSS source. They simply cannot afford to sue everyone!
--
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
"On August 17, 2000, a federal district court in the Southern District of New York confirmed that offering, providing, or trafficking in DeCSS..."
We are now "trafficking" illegal code.
I love it! Now we can say we are members of the "KDE Cartel" or the "Gnome Cartel".
rd
Therefore, by their own accusation, the MPAA are in violation of their MPAA order.
Anyone want to point this out to them?
(Needless to say, the court decision specifically mentioned "intent to link to decss code", so the average random linking that 99.9% of the links out there are harmless here.)
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Now look what you've done. You're linking to sites that can link to the DeCSS through a simple search. That warrants DEATH by listening to Britney Spears at 2x speed...
This
If they just went after the host that the link goes to? And what happens to links that were made before DeCSS was made? They dont have any control over what content is put on sites that they link to. And I dont think it should be their responsibility to see if their links are "DeCSS Safe".
Store the stuff on a server you run if you actually believe in the spread of DeCSS.
Your upstream provider can always terminate your service.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
What we need to do to facilitate this is:
Don't like to DeCSS, link to Altavista's links to DeCSS. Link to Yahoo's links to DeCSS.
*FORCE* the MPAA to drag them into court if they want to drag us into court.
-
You know, not to be an obnoxious twit or anything (*grin*), but why can't someone create a bunch of source files which look like CSS but isn't (by changing a key or something)? Or distribute a file called 'DeCSS.zip' which contains a program 'DeCSS.exe' which is actually a version of "whack-a-mole" with various MPAA figure's heads?
The idea is that right now, I suspect the MPAA is simply throwing "DeCSS" into a search engine and sending threatening letters to everyone whose name pops up out of the list. By having a number of files out there which are not the CSS descrambler sources or executables, but are called 'DeCSS', we could theoretically tie up the MPAA in a bunch of potentially losing lawsuits as they in turn sue the wrong people, and are thus forced to spend more resources than they currently are.
Hey, if the MPAA wants to sue every person on the planet, let them--just remember to countersue for legal costs, lost wages and other costs related to protecting yourself against a frivolous suit.
Discussion boards will be targeted. Many online news sites, like Slashdot, have these forums. If everybody posts DeCSS links every time there's a story on the MPAA... Pretty soon they'll be trying to hold moderators accountable for postings. Also, this is a pretty obvious example of where they'll use Carnivore... and if they give Carnivore the ability to intercept and block links and emails... Well, even though hackers will be able to go around it, most of the public won't.
If a pickpocket meets the Buddha, all he will see is the Buddha's pockets.
If you really want to annoy the DVD Mafia, rename DeCSS *to* MPAA. Can you imagine the chaos that will cause in the DVD Mafia's legal team trying to stomp out DeCSS code?
The MPAA FAQ about DeCSS and hyperlinking says:
Q: What is this Motion all about?
Q: The MPAA is only asking the Court to enter an injunction against Eric Corley, a/k/a "Emmanuel Goldstein" and those persons acting in concert with him, in the use of DeCSS hyperlinks.
If they are only asking that EG get the injunction... then why all the letters?
It sounds like they are not willing to risk declaring under penalty of perjury that the information is accurate. So, how accurate is it?
It may be accurate, but it applies only to providing DeCSS. The one place it mentions linking is to state that the court granted an injunction against linking. Whether for providing or linking, I wonder what the jurisdiction of this court is. New York? NorthEast USA? All of USA? The American continents? The world? Good luck enforcing it.
Edward Burr
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
When it comes down to it, I'm more than sure they're coming. We just haven't seen the government deem it necessary yet. I'm betting that with the population of the US, having something to control copyright issues was priority one. With fewer people in Canada, and some of us living in areas where internet access is still not available, is it necessary yet? Just wait until we see Jean Chretien's rendition of the law, that should be rather interesting.
www.arrogant.org - food for your brain
The district court granted a permanent injunction against
(1) posting on any Internet site, or in any other way manufacturing, importing or offering to the public, providing, or otherwise trafficking in DeCSS or any other technology primarily designed to circumvent CSS, and
(2) linking any Internet web site, either directly or through a series of links, to any other Internet web site containing DeCSS.
Ok, so here we have the Yahoo Violation. So let's shut them down to start with, after all they fall under the "series of links" criteria. I'm sure this would be the case for virtually all search engines out there.
But as I haven't had enough coffee yet, I'll leave it to you to investigate.
Since the web is, by nature a "series of links" I guess it's time to pull the plug, oh well it's been fun. Think I'll go to the beach...
"Who is that free thinking anarchist?" - C. Montgomery Burns
Correct me if I'm mis-remembering, but doesn't the DMCA target software whose "primary purpose or use" is to bypass. . . ? Why not embed the code as a menu selection in an open source word processor?
--When you buy proprietary software, you don't get better software. What you get is the right to complain about it.
Gnutella.
Publius.
Censorship sucks - it's nice to know there's a way to get around it while you're fighting the fight. :-)
Sean
Just type out the addresses of web sites that have it. So instead of go to OpenDVD.org to get DeCSS, put go to http://opendvd.org to get CSS. Its not linking.
I would assume that his link would have to be explicitly labelled as pointing to DeCSS in some way for any liability. Granted, the wording of (2) as it stands is far stronger, but I'd like to see them try and uphold it under the circumstances you describe.
"circumvention device". The DeCSS is not a device until it is compiled and executed until then, DeCSS is nothing more than a bunch of symbols on a piece of paper or t-shirt. You publish code.
However, the MPAA does not say this. They tell website operators to "remove the circumvention device from your website." IANAL, but what kind of language is this??? See the letter that the MPAA sent cryptome.org today for an example of this.
They cannot say "please remove the code that you have published on your website" because publishing involves speech, which the DeCSS is. When it is compiled and executed, your computer becomes a decryption device , placing it under patent laws. Is the DeCSS patented? If it is, then the US patent office has already published it. Then it follows that it is your computer that is the circumvention device not the DeCSS code by itself.
Another thing that gets me is the mishmash of copyrights and patents. Two different things, or two different temporary "granted monopolies". People should not be allowed to use one "monopoly" to increase the power of the other (i.g. dealing in software patents), because that power has not been granted by the constitution. The constitution separates the two because they were intended to deal separately with two different things, not act together. For many years, they had about the same amount of power until "copyright creep" started taking place, continually increasing its power until now you have the DMCA controlling "devices" overtaking the power of patents. Software should either have a copyright or a patent, but not both. If it can be copyrighted, then I should be able to have rights like "first sale" and "fair use" that have been argued the century before last when a publisher put a EULA on the first page of a book. If the software is a patent (i.g. a device that configures a computer), then I expect to be able to copy it in twenty years when the patent expires (and I mean the actual software created by the company using the patent). Just because you flash a contract in front of somebody's face or toss it in with the shinkrap doesn't mean you can usurp somebody's constitutional rights, and I consider having patents and copyrights acting as two separate entities as one of those rights. What we see now is the result of abuse of these two constitutionally "granted" temporary monopolies (making it greater than the freedom of speech). Taking a power that was niether "implied" nor "granted", they shaft the public out of their due - the very reason why the constitution grants patents and copyrights in the first place.
What the MPAA is trying to do is extend copyright privilege to devices (even they have to refer to DeCSS as a "device", otherwise their arguement gets flushed down the toilet where it belongs) all the while basking in the newfound powers of the copyright law/DMCA.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
The preceding rant is in no way intended to indicate that I approve with way things are going with decss(I strongly disapprove) but involving slashdot with it is unexcusable and while removing your posts they should probably consider removing your username also..
This reminds me of an old Andy Ihnatko article in MacWorld (MacUser?) I saw a couple of years ago. In it, he described a game called "Web that smut". The rules? Start with any page (preferably something like a congressman's home page) and find a set of links to pornography. The winner is the one who finds the minimum number of links. Anyone want to play "Web that DeCSS" starting with www.mpaa.org?
Under DMCA DeCSS is illegal because it is called a 'circumvention device.' So my question is, is it legally correct to call DeCSS a device? Wouldn't DeCSS just be an idea that executes on a device (ie a computer)? Or does speech now qualify as a 'device' just as encryption is a 'munition'?
\forall code \in C, \frac{\Delta readability(code)}{\Delta t} < 0
Maybe I want to add DVD playback cababilities to my Application. I need a component to do so and I am unable or unwilling to pay the MPAA licenses fees to do so.
Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com
Thanks for reminding me that, due to acute acronym shortage, CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets as well. OK, guys, that means that if we state in our pages that you can go somewhere to "remove CSS" or "defeat CSS" then the MPAA won't find you with a search for "deCSS" ... you'll be camoflaged among all the false results.Heh heh.
The MPAA shut one site down, and so someone else starts a new site. They shut that site down, and the next one comes along, ad infinitum. Anyone with any sense will use a free (Xoom, Geocities etc.) server and use false personal details when registering.
Quite why they are getting their panties in such a wad about casual use of DeCSS is a little beyond me anyway. How long will it be until DVD writers become affordable, and some hacker figures how to make straight bitwise copies of a DVD? CSS or no CSS it doesn't matter when you make a bitwise copy!
Why CSS was bothered with in the first instance, I don't know. It's a bit like I always wondered why copy protection schemes were always tried on the Amiga (they were always cracked).
The other thing about the movie industry that really gets my goat is region coding. It's just another shoddy attempt at distorting the free market and preventing competition, something they only had by accident (NTSC vs PAL vs SECAM) in the past.
Anyway, I wear my "Got DeCSS?" shirt with pride!
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I suggest the name dvd-fair-use-decrypter.c
It would be best if you don't link to sites directly. That will force the free speech aspect to become more direct. Use the text of the url like this
www.warcloud.net/dvd-fair-use-decrypter.c
If they want to prosecute they will have to mention "Fair Use" every time they open their mouth. How can the press ignore the fair use angle now? People need to know that rights they had a few years ago have been taken away and why!
What's in a name? Where would Linux be if Linus named Linux Freeix.
Perhaps a short commented section in the beginning of the file explaining harmfull efects the DMCA's changes to American law would also help.
When Hollywood pork bellies violate us, Don't just wave the Flag, wrap yourself in it!
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
Remember, we don't LIKE the MPAA. We actually WANT them to do stupid stuff like this. The more obnoxious they get, the better the chances that the whole DeCSS nonsense will get SMASHED, and the concepts of free use and free speech will return.
We should really be greatful to the MPAA for being such wonderfully obnoxious poster-boys for the DMCA, especially before the October review by the Library of Congress.
I hope they do a make a LOT more stupid moves like this, and get a lot more people mad.
Aside...
DeCSS is personal use of encryption. Encryption is a weapon, according to the government. Limiting our use of DeCSS is impairing our right to bear arms, as protected by the constitution, as well as impairing our free speach. Maybe the NRA is our friend on this one.
(Tongue partly in cheek on that last bit, but only partly.)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I believe the MPAA is making a grave mistake in takning these actions against...? Well Jeez - they havnt even chose a specific opponent except for the hundreds of thousands of people who have or have linked to DeCSS.
The NYTIMES must have received a couple of letters for their linking to DeCSS and 2600 in general. Its going to get quite interesting when this case goes to appeal. I hope the supreme court takes a close look at the bully tactics the MPAA is taking against the internet community. Now they are threating ISP's academic institutions and hosts into enforcing their defunct copyright for them. I dont suggest we call DeCSS a different name - I say we just Link to it more and more - sned emails to the MPAA with the source code atached or in the document - tell them your returning their CSS.
Better yet lets get some SPAM mail floating around, send emails to everyone you know containing the source code for DeCSS, explain to them what the MPAA is doing and have them send it along to some of their friends. I know that sounds sick and pervetted, but distribution and awareness are very important in this case.
Maybe we could put a server on SEALAND (you know about sealand right?) that just stores DeCSS and maybe even the kerbios specification. All I know is that the MPAA needs to know we wont be bullied - Im in Canada so I couldnt give a fuck about any emails they try to send me - Ill call their lawyers and ask if theyd like to extradict me.
If something goes mainstream it becomers generally accepted by the public, and remember that the government is 'for the people' its about time politicians took and active interest in that fact. Can you say 'election year'.
Harder.. Better.. Faster.. Stronger
Well, if Americans can have someone arrested in Norway, I don't imagine they'd have a lot of trouble going after Canadians. But we should try...
-Erf C.
-Erf C.
Cthulu always calls collect...
Question is, what happens when the MPAA gets wind of it? Can they prosecute me under U.S. law for a site in the U.K.? Can I tell them to go screw themselves, or am I in trouble?
Thanks. RB
----------
ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
--- Never hold a dustbuster and a cat at the same time ---
Setting his threshold to 5, Sparky eliminated most of the trolls on /.
Has anyone here been to law school? Do they really beat you that stupid before you're let out upon an unsuspecting public?
---
Our ISP was complaining because it was sucking to much bandwidth. Right now we have it so it randomly redirects to one of a number of mirrors. (a cheap PHP load balancing scheme). Anyway, looks like some of the mirrors pulled it. If it doesn't download, keep trying. You'll hit a mirror (or the original there) and you'll get it.
I haven't gotten a letter yet, but I'll keep y'all updated. I've got a number of lawyers from all over the country (even Harvard professors) aching to defend this song if it goes to court.
In the mean time- keep on downloading! You may be among the first Americans to own the very first illegal protest song. That'll be a sad sad day in American history. (I don't think it'll happen though. Frankly, I think the intelligent ones are on our side.)
Would the MPAA go after a site that provided broken source code to DeCSS? For example, change "int main(int argc, char* argv[])" to "function main(int argc, char* argv[])", but leave the rest of the source unmodified. Any person with trivial programming knowledge could easily fix the code, but it technically wouldn't be DeCSS.
htt p://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.mortmain.com /decss.txt+DeCSS+txt&hl=en
is a link to just one cached page.
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
This is getting out of control. To compare it to prohibition: It's gone from busting the people who designed the process to make alcohol to busting people who have the the way to make alcohol, to busting people who are saying where the instructions are to make alcohol.
A few organizations that tried pushing a mountain up a rock:
Unisys
Rambus
MPAA
RIAA
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
are there any movies released that are not part of the MPAA? are there any studios not part of the MPAA? How much does it take to join and what are the requirements? Anyone want to start a movie studio?
it is time to get to know our enemy. . . . .
- daniel
- daniel
Turn off your computer and go outside
can /. be taken down for allowing a poster to link to a search engine that links to DeCSS? I can obtain the complete DeCSS source from the links posted above, so it must be illegal. Oh, that would mean everyone linking to /. is also in violation, as well as anyone who links to a site with a /. link, and well, you see my point. I can find DeCSS source code by following links from my page, even though it's about 30 sites away. Do I get sued now too?
"You'll die up there son, just like I did!" - Abe Simpson
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
- If you're looking for the DeCSS program that's illegal (even if you're only going to use to to view DVD's in Linux), you can find it by starting here .
The difference is that one could argue that the above link was created with the intention to aid others in commiting a crime.However, since my intent was simply to communicate an idea, I should be safe from the MPAA, right? right?
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Thank god the internet's only a fad and this won't matter in a few years.
A weak case wouldn't set precedence by being thrown out of court, there is also the matter of jurisdiction. If the court is thrown out on the grounds that prohibiting linking to copyrighted material is unconstitutional it would only be a precedent in the territory over which that court has jurisdiction. A higher court could still overturn the findings.
The program can also be used in reverse, to combine the two files together. Whaddya think?
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Check out this link: http://www.lemuria.org/DeCSS/ This is hilarious, and based on the DMCA might just work... hmm...
If DVD decryption were handled by plugins having a simple streaming-filter interface then the MPAA's regressive actions would have almost no impact whatsoever. Player designers would be able to release their software with just a no-crypto plugin (so that you can play unencrypted DVDs, of which there are many), and couldn't be taken to task for dependency on DeCSS, since they wouldn't be.
And then, users wishing to watch their own encrypted DVDs on such a player would have merely to acquire and load a little plugin, which could easily be circulated on Usenet in the traditional way. Easy.
It'd be great if DeCSS (or another clean-room implementation of DVD decryption) were given such a treatment. The dlopen(3) interface is trivial to use. Does anyone know whether the current DeCSS is amenable to such conversion?
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Quick! Someone set up a Seven Degrees of DeCSS search engine!!
You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.
You mean like this ??
Go here
Best Slashdot Co
I think there's still a difference here. The actual "illegal" action is copying and decrypting the movie, correct? Not downloading DeCSS or reading about DeCSS.
No one's managed to make the Anarchist's Cookbook illegal yet, have they? And anytime a building blows up, the media gets to report about how they made the bombs, yes? This is only differnet because it doesn't even cause physical damage to people.
-A. Aria
typedef unsigned char byte; struct block { byte b[5]; }; extern void CryptKey1(int varient, byte const *challenge, struct block *key); extern void CryptKey2(int varient, byte const *challenge, struct block *key); extern void CryptBusKey(int varient, byte const *challenge, struct block *key); /* if this comment were speech, it would be lame */ /* tried to uuencode it but too much caps, got lameness filtered, sorry for the spam */
I guess it's time to commit it to memory.
____________________________________
-- I beleve you'll like this -->
My hopes rest on the higher courts being clueful. If they're not, it's time to emigrate.
--Fesh
"Citizens have rights. Consumers only have wallets." - gilroy
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
Why don't you let the MPAA know how you feel about their actions?
Their website is here , or give the nice folks a call at 818-995-6600. (Don't want to burn your nickel? Try dialpad.com.
"The Whiney Complainer" Pokrefke
FWIW - my laptop doesn't even have a DVD player!
It's interesting that in the letter they are sending to Americans, they say:
The Motion Picture Association of America is authorized to act on behalf of the following copyright owners [...]
whereas in the letter they send to foreign DeCSS hosts they say:
The Motion Picture Association is authorized to act on behalf of the following copyright owners [...]
Spot the difference? Apparently they are not very confident that foreign ISPs are going to respond favourably to demands from the Motion Picture Association of America, so they invented a fictitious organization called the "Motion Picture Association" to send out these cease & desist letters.
Exactly what is the legal duty of someone who receives a letter which states:
"The information in this notification is accurate, and we declare, under penalty of perjury, that the Motion Picture Association is authorized to act on behalf of the owner[s] of exclusive rights described above."
when in fact there is no such thing as the "Motion Picture Association"? If you could find out who the pranksters are who are behind this forgery, please see that they're taken to court for perjury!
Alex Berkman
That's a good idea, but to make it even better, how about implementing such decryption code in the form of decryption plugins with a defined API that designers of players could use without getting themselves compromised, as I wrote elsewhere in this thread.
That would be as unstoppable as Usenet, which is pretty darn unstoppable.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
If they keep doing, they might get blacklisted...
send decss source out as spam to everyone in the world
http://Lenny.com
The GO Network is owned and operated by The Walt Disney Company, an MPAA member. Here's a whole bunch of links from the GO Network to DeCSS source.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
If I link to a page [that links to a page]* that links to a DeCss, am I in trouble?
If so, I'm removing my links to search engines...
Well, if you read the ruling, the judge acknowledges that you cannot outright ban linking to pages that contain direct links DeCSS among other content if you are not explicitly linking for the purpose of taking someone to the DeCSS link. This would have what is know as the "chilling effect" where people would be afraid to link to search engines, as you imply above. The "chilling effect" is unfortunately well covered in his ruling.
Basically, if I say, "Here's DeCSS!" and provide a direct link, then I am in violation of the clause of the DMCA prohibiting trafficking in copy-protection thwarting decryption software -- as I obviously should be under the letter of the law. I mean, just because it's not on my site doesn't mean I'm not guilty of helping people to get it. It's all transparent to the end user whether they are grabbing it from a server I own or a server owned by someone else.
However, you can't make a link illegal to a site that you didn't know contained DeCSS or a link that was made for other purposes. An example would've been a link to 2600.com back when they actually hosted the code for purposes of linking to a hacker magazine. That would've have been illegal. The grey area, I think, is if you linked to their DeCSS links page and told people what it is. I'm not sure about that one.
Anyway, don't worry about search engines. The acknowledged "chilling effect" prevents them from being a problem. Read the ruling. A grounding in constitutional law helps. (IANAL, but this is a big area of interest of mine.)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
> Th_ Unit__ _tat__ wa_ on__ a fr__ _ountry, but not anymor_.
Because I was able to parse and reconstruct jvmatthe's comment, can jvmatthe throw me in jail for circumventing his access control mechanism?
Since this review will be in English with pseudo-code that isn't compilable by existing compilers, the review could in no way be viewed as a "device" and it will be impossible to see it as anything other than a creative expression, protected under the 1st ammendment.
As another project, I would suggest people take the existing DeCSS code, analyze it for actions that are very common and difficult to implement in C, and then come up with language semantics that would make those actions simpler. Then, generalized versions of these semantics could be added to existing languages like TCL or perl, thereby making the actual DeCSS code smaller and simpler.
The story before this concerns an Anti-trust action against M$.
Yesterday we heard about Micron's suit against Rambus.
So why wait for the MPAA to sue you? Nail the Bastards first. A class action lawsuit charging the DVD Cartel with restraint of trade. Let them try to defend regional encoding to protect regional pricing.
If I read the threatening letter from the MPAA correctly, the MPAA thinks the judge has ruled the internet unlawful. They are say that any link that takes you to a site that has links, one of which could lead you by any route to a copy of DECSS is illegal. Since there's no limit to the length of the chain, a site can never know if one of it's link might be the starting point of a path to DECSS. Hence to avoid legal attack, the only safe course is to link only to sites that are dead ends. Anything else and expect to hear from the MPAA's lawyers.
This message has been encrypted by XORing each byte with the number 0. If you can read this, then your web browser is violating the DMCA's anti code-cracking section, and you must immediatly remove all copies of the offending software on all machines that you have control over. After doing this, please report yourself and the manufacturer of the offending software to the FBI. Thank you for your cooperation.
http://www.mpaa.org/3 000wh-educ-edu.html
/ cyberlaw/11law.html
i nkscyberlaw.html
0 808_ny_post_trial_brief.html
http://www.mpaa.org/home.htm
http://www.mpaa.org/tv/
http://www.tvguidelines.org/default.htm
http://www.tvguidelines.org/resource.htm
http://www.nea.org/
http://www.nea.org/news/
http://www.nea.org/info/press/
http://www.nea.org/news/press/
http://www.edweek.org/clips/
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/08
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/tech/
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/08/cyber
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/reference/l
http://www.eff.org/
http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/MPAA_DVD_cases/2000
http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/dvd/
http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/DVD/DeCSS/
http://www.zpok.demon.co.uk/decss/
I hope I just didn't get the NEA in hot water!
If a link to a page that has DeCSS is illegal, then what about a link to a page that has a link to it?
Maybe the whole web is illegal since it's all interlinked.
I hope some judge has the common sense to rule that pointing to a crime isn't illegal.
I guess that was a nice act of civil disobedience, but it posts a list of 130+ sites the MPAA can write nasty letters to, so get your code NOW, because the ones that aren't busted now sure will be tomorrow.
Don't turn your neighbors in to the Gestapo. Make it hard for them to make a bust!
1. Take your copies of DeCSS and css-auth, and dork up about 51% of the code so its no longer workable code.
2. Call it DeCSS and css-auth, tar & zip it and put it up for download.
3. Give it to your friends. Link to each other. Post it on every site and link exchange you can.
MAKE THEM PROVE IT.
Remember WW2? The allied planes dumped aluminum foil out of planes to confuse Nazi radar. Get some DeCSS foil in the air instead of shining spotlights on the good stuff.
My metamoderation cancels your moderation
I mean more like splattering brains with a shotgun (Mossberg 590 would do just fine =:-)
Fucking nazis. They can go
Eat A Bag of Dicks!
---
Play Six Pack Man. I
Singing the DeCSS is one thing (and an interesting excercise in protesting as well) but to meet the real challenge, and show the incredible stupidity of the MPAA and cabal, can you get a major artist to record the song and include it on one of their CDs? Or better yet get it included as music on the soundtrack of a movie that will come out on DVD?
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
This is why Kaplan's ruling is sooo bad that it won't last 15 min on appeal. That us unless the next judge is plainly (IMHO) as bought and paid for as Kaplan. I only see two possibilities, again, in my opinion:
1. Kaplan is biased because of corruption or prior influence
2. Kaplan is incompetent, or has no respect for the law.
I see no third possibility. To read the ruling literally as seems reasonable (considering Kaplan interpreted DMCA in the most extreme possible way), it would seem to make the WHOLE WWW subject to an injuction as you said.
In 2000 America, is a non-lawyer truly free?
So who is responsible here? Can the posters be sued for their posts? Or is /. the one who is going to be sued, for allowing the posts?
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
I went to a Polish mirror of DeCSS and found a copy of the "non-domestic" letter the MPAA sends. Pretty much the same as the one on , except for the part that says: "Even if you are not bound by this injunction, we submit the legal rationale of these opinions would apply to the activities complained of herein. Thus we still request you comply with this request." My understanding of things says that this is crap. The case was about circumvention of an access control device, right? That's an American thing.
If DeCSS was renamed to some generic word like "the", wouldn't it be impossible to search for sites providing it?
From MPAA's letter (note the bold part): "On August 17, 2000, a federal district court in the Southern District of New York confirmed that offering, providing, or trafficking in DeCSS, or any other device designed to circumvent CSS, violates the DMCA."
Are they going to sue them for having a hyperlink too? Thats crazy
What about this scenario?
Suppose you have a website, and you have a copy of the DeCSS source in your directory, but you did not grant other users the read permission on your copy of DeCSS. According to this ruling, your site is illegal, yet no physical link to DeCSS exists.
I think this issue has gone on too long. If I was the judge, this case would have been settled a long time ago.
Create a new file that does just that and link to it!
The MPAA, in their latest attempt to win friends and influence people, included the following demand (their word) in their letter:
>3) advise us of the name and physical address of the person operating this site; and
My reaction to this would have to be, "Not without a subpeona, motherfucker."
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Think outside the box too, get a vegitarian friend to sue on grounds that sheep sacrafice is offensive. (Jews and Muslims sacrafice sheep all the time)
I'm sorry? Would you like to run that by me one more time?
I'm Jewish and have never sacrificed anything (outside of a Nethack game...).
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
deCss
And if even that should be forbidden, what happens if i just mention that by entering a search string like DeCSS into your favourite search engine it will probably pop up about 50.000 web-pages discussing DeCSS, with a sufficient percentage of them linking to the actual code.
Will that be forbidden next? Or will all big search engines be forced to use "filter lists" to ban the bad words (i can imagine some people might then push on to get words like 'sex', 'nude' etc. on that lists). Why stop there, why not ban every mentioning of the 'evil word' altogether since otherwise people might get the idea to search for it.
I think i'll go and read Kerningham/Ritchie before they start burning books.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
I seem to remember in one of the MPAA's briefs that they have had their e-mail down for a good while. I have no doubt that this was because of mailbombing or other hactivist activities. It has also helped them build their case against the immorality of 2600's position, which came through loud and clear from the judge's opinion.
What we need on this issue is more public support and awareness. Everyone (and I do mean everyone) that I have explained this case to has agreed that the MPAA has overstepped their bounds, however there's only so much that this type of communication can do.
But in a war of public opinion, taking the high road is often much more productive. People (i.e. general public) are scared of things they don't understand. When/if CNN finally does report on this issue (...), I think it would be better for everyone if it wasn't as an aside to explaining why the website for every major movie studio was inaccessible.
$.02, take it or leave it.
(and as the judge also pointed out, it was Congress that left us with the DMCA. Make your opinion and your reason known to them)
--
+&x
So now, if I ever want to see a movie in the future, it has to be on an MPAA approved machine and software? Even if its operation in the near future requires connection to a telephone for activation? If thier devices are buggy and crash after watching the manditory 10 minutes of commercials at the beginning of each movie?
Ah, yes. Now you see the whole danger of the DMCA. DIVX was the first shot in the war on consumer property rights, but the pay-per-use annoyance-ware model has not yet died. Witness the recent Slashdot story about the evil subscription textbooks that one company is pushing. In particular, read their PR page. They don't care about their customers -- students and campus bookstores. They don't have to. As long as they can lock you into paying for the rest of you life for something you could pay once for nowdays, and as long as they can prevent you for reselling your copy to someone else, they can keep pumping every student for money as much as possible. As a student who recently had to pay $300 for textbooks, at least 2 of which I will be using for years to come if not the rest of my life, I am very angry about this trend.
We are beginning a new age of corporate control over our lives and our very fundamental freedoms. As much as I disagree with him on other issues, Richard Stallman's "The Right to Read" is dead on the money. Keep these times fresh in your mind -- you'll be telling your grandkids one day what the "good old days" were like.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
So far, fallen: IBM, DEC
In the process of falling: Microsoft, MPAA/RIAA, Rambus
Still to fall: AOL, Intel, WIPO/ICANN/et al.
The implications? In reality, probably none. But it would be nice to imagine that the self-centered, selfish, arrogant, corrupt and degenerate corporations will someday face a Judgement Day, in which they are called to answer for their actions, even where those actions were merely unethical, profiteering and barbaric, as opposed to being criminal.
The idea of a large, foul, odorous monster, the spawn of Hell, rising and enslaving those who lived off the misery and suffering of others has a certain appeal, too, I must say.
Unfortunately, reality intercedes and rejects the notion. The greedy will continue to live off everyone else's misery, at least until the Pilgrims: Next Generation (read: geeks) build rockets to found a new civilisation on a planet far enough away to escape this State of Decay.
(Note to Whovians: There really isn't much difference between what's happening in most Western civilisations and the aforementioned Doctor Who episode. Right down to the vampires.)
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)
Respectfully
I wish I were that smooth.
Because you can't, you won't, and you don't stop...
or make a functional binary and distribute that.... then it isn't the code, it's a collection of 1's and 0's.. Then it is software, not code. The code is what is considered free speech. Software is subject to more legal stuff, such as not beign able to export certain strengths of encryption software but you can send a book out of the country with the code printed in it.
The article's suggestion of massive distribution makes sense to me. Once it is widely distributed, the costs to the MPAA for stopping further distribution become overwhelming.
Napster could be used to distribute this, but Napster only works with files having a MP3 extension. However folks could distribute this on Napster by putting the file in a directory with their other MP3s and renaming it with an MP3 extension. For example rename the file as follows:
And good luck to the MPAA sending a "please stop" email.
Here in the US, even copyrighted material may be reproduced, following "fair use" guidelines, which allow (any lawyers, please correct me here):
1. Reproduction of a portion of the copyrighted material, where
2. commentary or opinion is stated of the copyrighted material, such that the substantive "message" is not in the copyrighted material reproduced, but in the opinion.
Therefore...
1. Break DeCSS into 10 (50? 100?) code snippets, and hand the snippets to individuals for their commentary. These snippets, along with the commentary, may be posted, broadcast, spoken, or sung freely in the US.
2. Write and distribute a Perl script which hunts down the snippets, contcatenates them, and (optionally, though I don't know why anyone would want to do so) parses out all of the commentary, leaving only the code.
The cure for cancer is coming: Reovirus
Baloney. What has just been demonstrated is the absolute ridiculousness of this ruling. How many discussion sites out there allow posting of HTML code? Too many. If slashdot wants forums like this then the link you see above is something they will have to live with (I also think they will defend their rights to have their users post that link).
If this ruling holds and sets precident, it will be very very bad news for the web.
How far can the MPAA reach with its letters? Is this just restricted to the USA, or is my page which links to search engine searches for DeCSS which is hosted in the UK at risk of receiving such a letter?
If US laws can also be applied in the UK then why shouldn't it work the other way... I'd love to see the result of an old English law that says London Taxi drivers are allowed to relieve themselves against the front wheel of their cabs... outside the MPAA's offices would be OK with me! ;-)
Well the problem is that a judge WOULD forbid everyone on the planet from ever using open source code in any program ever. And then all of a sudden a new precident is set that screws over open source development. Welcome to the wonderful world of the commercial internet.
Napster and DeCSS are merely tools for copying material. Much like a copy machine is a tool for copying material. Historically, how a tool is used has never been anyone's business, copyright law provides for fair use, and suits have been filed against alleged infrigers of copyrighted material -- those who allegedly actually made a copy and distributed it. However, with the net, the tool itself is attacked as an article for infringing a copyright. There is no precedent for these recent cases or arguments. If these arguments had merit then the copy machine, that purple crap back in the '70s to copy things at home, VCR, the disk drive, the camera... would all be prohibited. IMO, there is absolutely an absence of an understanding of technology or the law, or both by the legal community. It amazes me that the MPAA devotes their resources to prohibiting DeCSS when the MPAA does not pursue the thousands of individuals who post or sell first run movies on the Net. Filing suit against those who truly infringe copyright material would be consistent with the application of law to other subject matters and precedent. Unfortunately, IMO, the law is erroneously applied to the net and new laws are adopted to deal with net-related material in special manners. How could the legal community become tech-literate? Why is the Internet treated in such a special manner by the system? Is there a conspiracy at work here?
As far as I know I did not breach my contract with the ISP, but they claimed that they can terminate my account simply because someone feels offended by its contents. I've told them that I'm going to sue them but received no reply. I'm going to see a lawyer next week.
Rather than suing your ISP, try beating them at their own game: post their name, and a list of a few other customers, and we'll send them a couple more of legalese letters claiming that such and such customer has breached some copyright somewhere. Eventually they will have to kick so many customers that it hurts their business. Hopefully, this makes them more critical vs lawyer's letters.
We could actually push this a bit further: if each Slashdot users picks one random web page per week, finds out the ISP via whois or some other means, and sends a "legal" letter, then these hoax letters will be so ubiquitous that nobody will take lawyer's letters serious any more.
Just be careful to chose your marks purely randomly, do not sign with your real name, and do not post the letters in your hometown, and this shenanigan will be almost untraceable. Result: a beautiful proof ad absurdum of this whole legal crazyness.
its all their fault!!!
if it hadn't been for that movie "Hackers", i never would have found out about this seedy open source underworld!!! if they hadn't glorified hackers, i wouldn't have gotten involved in any of this!!
I'LL SUE!!
I'm surprised that nobody has registered their ire by organising DOS / mass cracks of MPAA affiliated sites. Sort of like hacktivists saying "we don't like what you're doing to our web, so we won't let you play on it. You've bought the courts, but this is our manor, you are just guests"
There was PimpShiz for Napster (interview was fairly recent on
I'm not in any way advising anyone to do any of the above; just curious as to why the 2600 crowd (amongst whom I should imagine there are some _real_ 31337 d00ds) aren't doing anything. Maybe Emmanuel has more control of them than I realise with his plea to leave it to the courts.
I know there are some of you reading this who are thinking that this is an immoral (censoring their free speech and all) way of advancing the issue, but I'd look at it like this: big pocketed corporation vs a few loosely affiliated nerds. BPC can buy courts, LANs cannot. They have their tools, we have ours. It's just like David and Goliath...
Discuss...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Unfortunately, the First Amendment isn't the blanket on censorship everyone thinks it is. Take the Supreme Court case U.S. vs O'Brien. This is the infamous draft card burning case, where O'Brien claimed that the 1st Amendment superceded the 1965 amendment to the Selective Service Act that prohibited the defacement of draft cards. To quote Justice Warren's opinion of the court:
This case is frequently brought up in cases like the DeCSS case, where nonspeech elements are important considerations and in the early commercial speech cases. This is the reason why flipping over someone's car because you were "expressing" your happiness that the Bulls won the championship game is still illegal. Unfortunately, the judge in the DeCSS case argued very intelligently about the constitutionality of limiting speech with the DMCA (with the exception of his "Congress must've considered this" arguments). Over half of his 90+ page ruling covers this issue. It's a good read.
While I severely disagree with the DMCA's ramifications, it is currently legal and looks to stay that way.
--
Get DeCSS -- The legal way... for now.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
so why are MPAA only going after decss?
blessings,
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
Then release the sound file on the web, and you might have a free speech rendition of the code. Would it pass as music? Or a copyrightable sound?
Once downloaded simply demodulate to text and woohoo an illegal device...in the US at least!
If such speech is protected, then this could be a method to protect all works that greedy corporate bastards have some kind of problem with.
Could even get DJs to mix it into some phat tunes! I've certainly heard some music with what sounds like modem connection sound effects, mixed in...radiohead springs to mind.
I'd bet you're are right, William. But you're proof that the "liitle guy" can when...
Dave
My domain is registered in France. My ISP is in Canada..... We don't need no stinkin' DMCA.
FunkyDemon
DeCSS is illegal. The judge said so. it doesn't matter if it's right or not, the judge said so. You should all know by now that a lawsuit is just a contest to see who has the most expensive lawyer. The suit is over, Free Software lost. Can we get over it now please?
I for one just resolve not do buy anything on DVD until the do away with the region codes. Why don't you all just refuse to buy DVDs? That's a perfectly legal form of protest, instead of just copying around the illegal source code.
This has gotten way out of hand. Is there anything we can do about it? I don't think a boycott at this point would do much -- the people who would care about DeCSS would maybe make up 10% of the buyers if we're really lucky. Other than applying for 150,000 Geocities pages to store the code on :)
--DrH, the Sandwich with the Ph.D.
I made an attempt at providing anonymous hosting for people but it never took off. After seeing the MPAA demand in the letter that they are sending out to not destroy logs of the site, I will have to emphasize that now. I told all my (few) clients that the log files are destroyed with an 18-pass PGP wipe nightly.
Tell me I have to keep records of clients whose identity I don't even know? BULLSHIT.
Fuck You Jack Valente - see if you can force me to keep records. Or will you send your jackboots to seize my property? Bring it on....
What I want to know is, what if rather providing a link, I simply print the url and allow people to cut and paste it into the adress bar?
Care about freedom?
I'd rather be lucky than good.
-- Dave
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
Actually, we can do BOTH. The solution is to distribute deCSS widely, but not link to it - but make it understood how to acquire it easily.
Everyone with a domain should put deCSS in webroot. Don't link to it, but make it standard - you should be able to go to any website you want and type in http://www.domainname.com/deCSS.zip and bingo! you download the file. But nary an <a href=""> anywhere!
Every webmaster on every site, commercial, private, personal, educational - should put deCSS in webroot. Imagine:
webmasters, unite! Civil Obedience on a grand scale! !Link !
let's show the MPAA it isn't linking per se they should fear, but the power of people to resist in an organized way when their rights are taken away for corporate gain. or, more colloquially...
The First Rule of Link Club is: you don't talk about !Link Club
The Second Rule of !Link Club is: YOU DON'T TALK ABOUT !LINK CLUB.
The Third Rule of !Link Club is: if this is your first night, you WILL put deCSS in webroot!
JOIN !LINK CLUB! spread the word...
JOIN !LINK CLUB!
Don't blame me - I voted for Howard Dean. http://dean2004.blogspot.com
I've got a copy of the code on my web page at: computers.html
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a,0xca,0x2a,0xaa,0x6a,0xea,0x1a,0x9a,0x5a,0xda,0x3 a,0xba,0x7a,0xfa,0x06,0x86,0x46,0xc6,0x2 6,0xa6,0x66,0xe6,0x16,0x96,0x56,0xd6,0x36,0xb6,0
x76,0xf6,0x0e,0x8e,0x4e,0xce,0x2e,0xae,0x6e,0xee,0 x1e,0x9e,0x5e,0xde,0x3e,0xbe,0x7e,0xfe,0 x01,0x81,0x41,0xc1,0x21,0xa1,0x61,0xe1,0x11,0x91 ,0x51,0xd1,0x31,0xb1,0x71,0xf1,0x09,0x89,0x49,0xc9 ,0x29,0xa9,0x69,0xe9,0x19,0x99,0x59,0xd9 ,0x39,0xb9,0x79,0xf9,0x05,0x85,0x45,0xc5,0x25,0x
a5,0x65,0xe5,0x15,0x95,0x55,0xd5,0x35,0xb5,0x75,0x f5,0x0d,0x8d,0x4d,0xcd,0x2d,0xad,0x6d,0x ed,0x1d,0x9d,0x5d,0xdd,0x3d,0xbd,0x7d,0xfd,0x03,
0x83,0x43,0xc3,0x23,0xa3,0x63,0xe3,0x13,0x93,0x53, 0xd3,0x33,0xb3,0x73,0xf3,0x0b,0x8b,0x4b, 0xcb,0x2b,0xab,0x6b,0xeb,0x1b,0x9b,0x5b,0xdb,0x3
b,0xbb,0x7b,0xfb,0x07,0x87,0x47,0xc7,0x27,0xa7,0x6 7,0xe7,0x17,0x97,0x57,0xd7,0x37,0xb7,0x7 7,0xf7,0x0f,0x8f,0x4f,0xcf,0x2f,0xaf,0x6f,0xef,0
x1f,0x9f,0x5f,0xdf,0x3f,0xbf,0x7f,0xff'"s stab1[key[3]]^key[2];key[2]=k[2]^csstab1 [key[2]]^key[1];key[1]=k[1]^csstab1[ke
y[1]]^key[0];key[0]=k[0]^csstab1[key[0]]^key[4];ke y[4]=k[4]^csstab1[key[4]]^key[3];key[3]= k[3]^csstab1[key[3]]^key[2];key[2]=k[2]^csstab1[
key[2]]^key[1];key[1]=k[1]^csstab1[key[1]]^key[0]; key[0]=k[0]^csstab1[key[0]];}'"; lfsr0 = (lfsr0>>8)|(o_l
fsr0
"Hmm," said Jane. "Let me try. Robot, enter command mode"
I've also got the song version there. It may be inaccessible, since the university DNS server is down though.
Quite a while back someone posted the decss source code as a story (don't recall who wrote it). Here it is:(sorry about the poor formatting)
*******************
NOTE: This story is licenced under the GPL version 2.
It is a dark and stormy night in a dark and stormy town. Tonight we find ourselves looking apon Dick and Jane, two programmers bundled up by the fire discussing current events:
"So, Jane, how was your day?" says Dick.
"Oh, fine. You know, I just heard about this interesting program that is creating quite a fuss." says Jane, "It is called 'css_descramble.c'.".
"Wow," Dick enthused, "I have heard of it. My buddy kept talking about it. He couldn't stop mentioning how it was...how did he put it? Ah yes, 'Released under the version 2 of the GPL and Copyright 1999 Derek Fawcus'".
Jane jumped with joy. "I am so glad you have heard of it. I happen to have a copy. Here, look. The very first thing it does is '#include <stdio.h>' then it has '#include <string.h>'."
"You are right, but you forgot '#include "css-descramble.h"'" Dick admonished.
Jane blushed, "Silly me. Well, we should have a look at the code. It seems to start with 'typedef unsigned char byte;'. Then it moves right along to an array. What is that? Oh, 'static byte csstab1[256]={'"
"I know!" Dick blurted, "lets play a number game! I will say a bunch of numbers, then you can repeat the numbers. Ready? '0x33,0x73,0x3b,0x26,0x63,0x23,0x6b,0x76,0x3e,0x7
"Hmmm...that is one long list of numbers...let me see. Was it, ' 0xd3,0x93,0xdb,0x06,0x43,0x03,0x4b,0x96,0xde,0x9e
Dick frowned, "That is completely wrong! Well, let me try again, '0x57,0x17,0x5f,0x82,0xc7,0x87,0xcf,0x12,0x5a,0x1
Jane furrowed her brow, "I think I can do this one, '0xd9,0x99,0xd1,0x00,0x49,0x09,0x41,0x90,0xd8,0x9
"Wow!" dick exclamed, "You suck! Third time is the charm: '0x3d,0x7d,0x35,0x24,0x6d,0x2d,0x65,0x74,0x3c,0x7
"I think so," Jane said, "Is it '0xdd,0x9d,0xd5,0x04,0x4d,0x0d,0x45,0x94,0xdc,0x9
Dick scowled, "No, no, no! It is, '0x59,0x19,0x51,0x80,0xc9,0x89,0xc1,0x10,0x58,0x1
"I remember!" Jane interupted "It is '0xb9,0xf9,0xb1,0xa0,0xe9,0xa9,0xe1,0xf0,0xb8,0xf
"Boy, that was harder than I thought." Dick sighed. Where were we in the code? Ah yes, '};static byte lfsr1_bits0[256]={'".
"You skipped a bunch" said Jane, "Besides, I am still not ready to look at that again. I feel like counting. In hex! '0x00,0x01,0x02,0x03,0x04,0x05,0x06,0x07,0x09,0x0
When jane finished she looked exausted. As she collapsed, she uttered the cryptic phrase, '};static byte lfsr1_bits1[512]={'.
Dick slapped Jane back to consciousness. "You counted wrong. You are delerious. Repeat these numbers until you feel better, '0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x2
Jane smiled, "Numbers always make me feel better. I will repeat those numbers, '0x00,0x24,0x49,0x6d,0x92,0xb6,0xdb,0xff,0x00,0x2
"'};static byte bit_reverse[256]={'," Dick swore. "That gave me a headache."
But Jane still continued to repeat the numbers, So Dick was forced to drown Jane out with his own numbers, "Two can play at that game, '0x00,0x80,0x40,0xc0,0x20,0xa0,0x60,0xe0,0x10,0x9
At this, Jane opened her eyes wide, she began shaking and speaking in tounges. "Bloogle said, '};static void css_titlekey(byte *key, byte *im, byte invert){unsigned int lfsr1_lo,lfsr1_hi,lfsr0,combined;byte o _lfsr0, o_lfsr1;byte k[5];int i;lfsr1_lo = im[0] | 0x100;lfsr1_hi = im[1];lfsr0 = ((im[4] >8)&0xff] >16)&0xff]>24)&0xff];'" Jane said as she rolled her eyes. "Lograth told Jane, 'combined = 0;for (i = 0; i >1;lfsr1_lo = ((lfsr1_lo&1)>8)^lfsr0)>>1)^lfsr0 )>>3)^lfsr0)>>7);lfsr0 = (lfsr0>>8)|(o_lfsr0 Dick looked concerned. He tried to calm her by reciting her favorite code segment, 'combined += (o_lfsr0 ^ invert) + o_lfsr1;k[i] = combined & 0xff;combined >>= 8;}'" His voice cresendoed as he reached the heigh t of the epic function, 'key[4]=k[4]^csstab1[key[4]]^key[3];key[3]=k[3]^c
Jane relaxed vissibly. At that point there was a knock at the door. Dick got up to answer it.
"Oh dear," said Dick. Jane rushed to see the problem.
At the door was a a robot gone awry. "Illegal function." It said in monotone, 'int css_decrypttitlekey(byte *tkey, byte *dkey, struct pl aykey **pkey){byte test[5], pretkey[5];int i = 0;for (; *pkey; ++pkey, ++i) {memcpy(pretkey, dkey + (*pkey)->offset, 5);css_titlekey(pretk ey, (*pkey)->key, 0);' Illegal function, 'memcpy(test, dkey, 5);css_titlekey(test, pretkey, 0);if (memcmp(test, pretkey, 5) == 0) {fprintf(stderr, "Using Key %d\n", i+1);break;}}i f (!*pkey) {fprintf(stderr, "Shit - Need Key %d\n", i+1);return 0;}css_titlekey(tkey, pretkey, 0xff);return 1;}' violates rules. Illegal function."
"Illegal function. What do you suppose it means?" wondered Jane.
"Hmm..." said Dick. "Lets see if we can fix the robot with some new instructions."
"Robot, enter command mode" Ordered Dick.
"By using this robot you agree not to reverse engineer, distribute, rent, or use this robot for purposes not explicitly..."
"Whatever," Dick interupted as he pressed the glowing accept button on the torso of the robot, "Robot, enter command mode."
"Ready for commands"
"Command: 'void css_descramble(byte *sec,byte *key){unsigned int lfsr1_lo,lfsr1_hi,lfsr0,combined;unsigned char o_lfsr0, o_lfsr1;unsigne d char *end = sec + 0x800;#define SALTED(i) (key[i] ^ sec[0x54 + (i)])'" Dick paused for a breath, "'lfsr1_lo = SALTED(0) | 0x100;lfsr1_hi = SALTED(1);lfsr0 = ((SALTED(4) >8)&0xff] >16)&0xff]>24)&0xff];sec+=0x80;combined = 0;while (se c != end) {o_lfsr1 = lfsr1_bits0[lfsr1_hi] ^ lfsr1_bits1[lfsr1_lo];lfsr1_hi = lfsr1_lo>>1;lfsr1_lo = ((lfsr1_lo&1) "Illegal command," the robot repeated. "Error code: 'o_lfsr0 = (((((((lfsr0>>8)^lfsr0)>>1)^lfsr0)>>3)^lfsr0)>>7)
"Ready for commands" droned the robot.
"Command: '*sec++ = csstab1[*sec] ^ (combined&0xff);combined >>= 8;}}' End command."
At this point the robot did something very frightening. It blew up. Dick and Jane shielded thier eyes. When they were finally able to see again, they were shocked by what lay before their eyes. When the robot exploded, it released thousands of fliers. The fliers flew for miles around. On each flyer the reader was greeted with the source code for a program. The program was DeCSS.
***********
For "Media Platform Accesssing Algorithm"
Why don't each of us select one line of the code and publish just that line, prefixed with the file name and line number. Then we can make a DeCSS webring where anyone can retrieve the source. For instance, I'd make a page with just this: css-auth.c,65: 0x1a, 0x18, 0x1e, 0x1c, 0x1b, 0x19, 0x1f, 0x1d, Then we could publish a perl script that would follow a web ring and assemble the code.
If that is a direct link to DeCSS on your page, then you are guilty of breaking the DMCA. (Boo hoo, IMHO.) However, your professor did not link to your page for the purposes of distributing DeCSS code. Neither he, nor anyone else further up the chain, are guilty of violating the DMCA. To hold otherwise would be to be in violation of the "chilling effect" principle often cited in First Amendment cases.
While I have issues with the judge's attitude towards 2600 and the guy who wrote DeCSS ("if that's truly the purpose it was written for"), his arguments on the constitutionality of limiting linking are very, very well argued.
---
Get your DeCSS protest t-shirt right here. One of the few remaining legal DeCSS links.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The MPAA are sending letters to people in Canada, but there are still mirrors (a few anyway).
There are two kinds of sysadmins: paranoids and losers. I'm both kinds.
(2) linking any Internet web site, either directly or through a series of links, to any other Internet web site containing DeCSS.
By this logic... isn't the entire web now illegal? Everybody links to everything eventually "through a series of links". It's all a matter of how many links are in that series, which they don't specify.
Anyone want to take bets on when the MPAA issues a lawsuit against the world?
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
How is this supposed to make any difference? The MPAA can just threaten your upstream provider and get them to cut you off. An individuals with web server generally doesn't matter enough to an ISP to keep them from getting you cut off.
CVS is teh suck. Use Vesta instead.
I doubt that the MPAA has the ability to take every joe schmoe to court, just link/mirror DeCSS and ignore any shit they give you, the only people they will go after are people/organizations that are well known (2600, etc.) Oh, and sing/play the DeCSS Song in public, you'll get weird looks, but its worth it :)
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
Wrong. Simply, if /. takes responsibility for this one post that someone, somewhere finds offensive, then they will be personally responsible for everything that is posted here from now on. Remember how quickly that Microsoft letter regarding Kerberos source and the license agreement(sp?) was forgotten.
/. is not responsible for the actions of their users.
Links to DeCSS, and even the source has been posted by users in the past, the beauty?
Here's what I'm thinking...
Why couldn't we write a little script that takes DeCSS and a text document as input. The script generates a new script that, when run, will apply some kind of algorithm to the document to transform it into DeCSS. For example, you feed it DeCSS and the GNU Manifesto, and it generates a script that says "retrieve character 5 and 10 and 12 and 13, then 2 then..." etc.
Of course, that's just the simplest form, optimization is left as an exercise to the reader.
You're left with a script that does not contain DeCSS at all. Hand it out, or post it and you've got DeCSS, but without being DeCSS or linking to it. The ultimate irony would be to feed it the MPAAs homepage as input...
You'd want to make sure this program is random enough that it generates a different script each time, so it's really hard for the MPAAs scouts to scan the web for it. And to make things a little more interesting, it should be able to work with any source code you feed in, not just DeCSS... because from a legal perspective, we wouldn't want this tool to be designed to circumvent CSS would we?
Any takers? I'd do it this instant, but my employer would own it, since I'm at work, and that wouldn't be good...
Big suprise. Why face the threat of legal action when you can just kick off the user. I promise you, whatever makes people's jobs easier, they'll do. Nobody wants to be a martyr and get the sack.
Store the stuff on a server you run if you actually believe in the spread of DeCSS.
After actually reading the article (firewall problems) I can admit that I am truly botherd by the MPAA. They are using scare tactics to try and win there case. With no thought of due process or of an individuals right to free speech they are systematically trying to eliminate the material that they feel is objectional. not to mention they want our personal info from the ISP so they can come after us. Kind-of reminds me of the Nazi's... Just FYI, I happen to be married to a lawyer and after looking at the letter she says that all that they are trying to do is scare. If someone actually tries to fight this and takes them to court, again, this sort of thing will stop. They are using the weight of all those big words and threats of legal action the only "may" occure to force their will. They are hoping, and it looks like it is working, that ISP's and schools will give in rather than fight. I'm going to fight! Let worldnet try and shut me down!
___________________
___________________
He who laughs last... Thinks slowest
Well, there you have it, a simple way to get to DeCSS from MPAA and Buena Vista (AKA:Disney). Have fun and remember that stealing isn't right, but neither is stopping free speach by threatening lawsuits.
Mage...
Cause you can't get a tan from an amber monitor. If you do, there is something horribly wrong.
Just let everyone get the source once modify it as they see fit and post it to various sites and create a bigger mess for MPAA. Then they won't be able to just go after a single source set but multiple variations of it. It could be even compound to the point that they might consider just abandoning their worries over it and life will go on.
Then I wouldn't have to open up slashdot and find the most recent exciting news is a bunch of pricks with a lot of money are throwing another temper tantrum because things aren't going their way.
Hello,
:) let me explain.
Just scatter the entire source in a well organize web site on whatever come to your mind. And
clever people could produce a script wich retrieve the source from this site and reconstruct
the proper file:
I dont see a problem here.
Hum, so the source is the law braking thingy. Well there is a way around it
i.e:
In the light of the day, aN orphan is noThing but _ _ betweeN his father and is mother, but nothing is EQUAL in life, so 2 must be add to be right _;_.
So this sentence looks like this after parsing:
int n=2;
See. That's simple, no DeCSS name, The code is in the site, on the page and you can even link to the parser script (in what ever language Python, Perl, JAVA, even VB or C#) wich can change name at will.
Happy Hunting guys !!
assert(expired(knowldege)); core dump
Here it is: create a program that calculates the checksum of the movie, so you can "verify" it. Then the primary purpose of the program isn't to DeCSS it anymore. But you have to be able to DeCSS it to get the checksum on the movie and not just the encrypted data.
I agree the MPAA is not exhibiting due care and this could get them into trouble.
One way this could backfire is if they complain about the presence of files/links named deCSS [such as deCSS.tar.gz or deCSS.zip] yet such files contain innocuous contents [The US Constitution].
The MPAA probably base their complaints on filenames, and do not verify contents. Their complaints can then easily be verifed as false then they become liable for damages. IANAL.
To hell with the compromised-to-shit machinery of justice, let's dominate. Who holds the power? We do. They want to sue? Fine, we can just take away their web privileges. The queen bees are our slaves.
People who read about DeCSS
People who talk about DeCSS
People who listen to people who talk about DeCSS
People who think about DeCSS
People who have ever used the letters c,d,e & s in any way, shape or form
But, hey it's a free contry... right...
Vote Naked 2000
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I can't program, so the best I can do is contribute ideas.
How about someone takes the DeCSS code and writes a program with the same function, but in a different language? If it's in C right now, make it C++, Java, Pascal, or whatever. The lunatic fringe among us can do it in Assembler or BASIC.
can you get busted for linking to a singing version of DeCSS?
If so, Slashdot is about to get nailed!
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
Do you presume they'll win? IANAL, but IMO the instantiation of a lawsuit isn't the important 'precedent'. What's important is the ruling which comes out of the trial .
Depending on how things go, this could be a very good precedent...
Not directly. However your high priest has a list of sacrafaices that need to be performed on a regular basis. not just sheep, there is also the goat/scapegoat, and other sacrafices.
At present, the geeks who want to watch DVDs on Linux are the ones with their brains splattered on the walls. The MPAA is doing the splattering.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
the article states:
Actually, we can do BOTH of these solutions at once. The solution is to distribute deCSS widely, but not link to it - but make it understood how to acquire it easily.
Everyone with a domain should put deCSS in webroot. Don't link to it, but make it standard - you should be able to go to any website you want and type in http://www.domainname.com/deCSS.zip and bingo! you download the file. But nary an <a href=""> anywhere!
Every webmaster on every site, commercial, private, personal, educational - should put deCSS in webroot. I dream of the day when we can get:
webmasters, unite! rise up! insidiously spread the Code! Civil Disobedience on a grand scale!
let's show the MPAA it isn't linking per se they should fear, but the power of people to resist in an organized way when their rights are taken away for corporate gain. or, more colloquially...
The First Rule of Link Club is: you don't talk about Link Club
The Second Rule of Link Club is: YOU DON'T TALK ABOUT LINK CLUB.
The Third Rule of Link Club is: if this is your first night, you WILL put deCSS in webroot!
JOIN LINK CLUB! spread the word...
JOIN !LINK CLUB!
Don't blame me - I voted for Howard Dean. http://dean2004.blogspot.com
Do they only use DMCA as their defense? The law that only has effect on the U.S. soil? So, no uncle-fucka is going to annoy me if I'm not in the U.S.? Gee. Blame Canada!
It's illegal to traffic cocaine... It's illegal to posess cocaine... It's NOT illegal to tell someone where you think they can get cocaine... It's NOT illegal to tell someone how to purify cocaine... It's NOT illegal to give away cocaine-purifying procedures & instructions.... It's NOT illegal to teach someone how to make a nuclear bomb.... It's NOT illegal to tell someone where to get a nuclear bomb... It's NOT illegal to tell someone where to get materials for making a bomb... BUT... It's illegal to display/distribute DeCSS source code... It's illegal to TELL/SHOW someone where to get the source code... Is it just me? Or is the MPAA so scared shitless about losing their lambourghini's that they're trying to make everyone who LINKS DeCSS source code look like felons?? You know they know NOTHING about what the internet when they start hiring people to search for DeCSS on the internet and fire off an email to each person who hosts it. I wonder how many guys they hired for that job. For every site they shut down at least 2 more will pop up within a week by the same person. Don't they realise (cdn spelling) that what they're doing is futile? They already spent 4million bucks U.S.D. on the 2600 trial to stop 2600 from posting/linking decss.... and what did that get them? NOWHERE. The people at 2600 probably just shrugged off the judge's verdict and removed the tags from their site! The MPAA are probably kicking themselves in the ass now for wasting $4 million bucks that they could have spent on new rims for their cars. And guess where that money came from... I wonder how much more money they're going to spend on those guys typing in 'decss' on search engines before they realise that they're just shoving their money up their asses and shitting all over the internet. And what about this Professor who testified? Are they going to make a criminal out of someone who has a Masters and Ph.D in computer science simply because he hosts DeCSS in many many different (& creative) forms?
If they win against CUSS, then we produce REmoveCSS. RECSS is a whole new battle.
Hey, this could result in the MPAA suing the judge himself...
MPAA: No more arguments.
JUDGE: Okay, this court is now in recess.
MPAA: RECSS?! BURN 'IM!!!!
Okay, that wasn't funny.
--
Is it okay to cry "Movie!" in a crowded firehouse? --Steve Martin
My suggestion is to start posting the DeCSS sources and binaries to various newsgroups over and over. Probably best to use an anonymizing service to avoid legal entanglements. I don't think even the MPAA can get a link to a generic newsgroup banned. I.E., "We hear that someone is posting DeCSS to alt.source-code, but check for yourself. Even if they could, someone could just post the newsgroup name itself.
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
It's not steganography, and it's not even very clever, but a question arises. This is a gif. It's not text, and thus compiler readable. It's not anything that can be read immediately, so is this illegal?
http://www.chaos.org/img/main/news/de cssx.gif
Opinion: Scientology is a cult you should avoid. Follow the
How about an automated signature program that randomaly attaches something like this to each email you send out:
DeCSS #1: blah blah
Where the number is the line number from the source code and the following text is the single line of source code.
To screw them even more, don't change it randomly. Always send out the same line, that way you can't be accused of releasing the code. Just image their lawyers arguing that you are an evil hacker because your signature is:
DeCSS #10: {
-- Will program for bandwidth
Looks like they plan on actually trying to remove something from the web. Looks like a good test of the often-sigged adage that the Internet views censorship as damage and routes around it. Why not post the DeCSS code (can I even say it without being sued?) under a different name? It's going to be awfully hard to track down if it starts appearing under many different names.
Oh, and wouldn't that cause another problem, in that all the court documents are probably identifying the code by that specific name, if its a different name then they need to go back into court and spend MORE money on this. If we keep it up we could bleed em dry over time - or they will eventually realize the stupidity of their stance and give up.
In any case, this sets a dangerous precedent for the internet.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
In the spirit of hacktivism, what would happen if somebody got into one of the web sites of an MPAA member organization and placed a copy of DeCSS there? Then, everybody else could just link to the file and let the MPAA have fun suing... itself.
What else could I do except withdraw the deCSS stuff and relocate.
So MPAA, when are you outlawing your own players?
http://www.tonytee.nl/DECSS/mirror-list.shtml
As some of you know, I'm in the process of writing the Second Edition of a Commentary of Linux TCP/IP code as a Web publication. I wonder if I can use the same technology and the same method of publishing a Commentary on the source of the fair_use_decryptor.c source? Remember, this is not any executable or compilable source in its published form but is formatted explicited to be used in commentary and critique.
Before taking this question to my lawyer, I thought I'd get some opinions here.
I got the quote from here. I don't know where he got it..
So now, somebody has to set up an email address that any message received is responded to by emailing the DeCSS code back, then we can just put a link to the email address on our pages since we're not linking to the code, we're linking to an email address.
The MPAA is going after those who distribute the DeCSS source code, AND after those who link to those distributing it.
The DeCSS code is a matter of public record, among the court documents of the case, and is available under the Freedom of Information Act.
How long before the MPAA should logically sue the US government for posessing and distributing DeCSS?
Let's all write to the relevant court and request a copy of the court records - and find out.
The REAL jabber has the /. user id: 13196
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
yeah --
unfortunately, i think you hit the nail on the head.
what we really need is (and this nauseates me) someone famous and smart to come out on tv about this. you know? get someone who just doesn't give a f*&K, like jesse ventura or bill nye or wozniak or clint eastwood or somebody -- someone trustworthy, intelligent, and not really beholden to the mpaa -- to come out, explain this in 30 seconds, and get it on tv.
once this happens, and it works, the pressure will be on others to do the same or risk looking like lapdogs and greedy jack-asses. ooh, will smith'd be good -- we need somebody rich enough not to care, or whose reputation is enough to stand up to the fact that they'll probably get fired over this. that's why i said eastwood.
anyone got any better ideas? we need a spokesperson, cause our moms and dads and idiot cousins still think this is about stealing.
the thing is, we spend so much time in the slash-cave that we forget that cnn is still referring to this thing as a 'dvd-copying program'. nobody gets it.
god is just pretend.
Guys,
;)
:)
I cannot say how glad I am that this song has taken off the way it has, but as the Admin of joeysmith.com, I am BEGGING you guys to mirror this and make either Joe Wecker or I aware of it.
joeysmith.com is a 386/16 mb RAM running linux, apache, and php. It is hosted for me by a local ISP because I am friends with both the CEO and all of the SA's. But when they called me on Monday, they had to ask me to tune it down a bit, as I was using an entire T1 that is supposed to be shared among other co-locates.
If you have a mirror, you can email me, or webmaster@joeysmith.com (heh. that's me, too.
Note: The more mirrors, the less burden there is on each one, so mirror and encourage your friends to do so!
This may be a strange issue to come up with, but since the internet is linked in many ways, how come they would not have to actually sue the entire world (if they sue site who link to sites that link to site that ...)
-- Martial MICHEL
1) As far as I understand it, only 2600 is enjoined by that ruling!
2) Which district court? Being a student of urban legend, my alarm bells would be going off at that lack of detail.
--Fesh
"Citizens have rights. Consumers only have wallets." - gilroy
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
Sinse Bill Gates has more money than the GNP of some small countries, I would think that this would be a good way to finally get in the good graces of us Linux Evangelists(tm)
Have BG/Microsoft buy out the MPAA and the RIAA and force them to stop this nonsense allready, and drop all the lawsuits. Then we will have just one currupt company to deal with, instead of several wanna-be's.
make Linux, not Microsoft. sin(beast) = -0.809016994374947424102293417182819
...Try the courts. Isn't anyone else disturbed by this trend of using Judicual Branch as a place to set legistlative agendas? There would be no possible way the MPAA could convince any state or the US Congress to pass their stiffling laws but the MPAA can sure sue the heck out of people. >-(
That's it I'm either running for president on a purely technological platform or I'm starting my own country...who's with me?!!!
So now, if I ever want to see a movie in the future, it has to be on an MPAA approved machine and software? Even if its operation in the near future requires connection to a telephone for activation? If thier devices are buggy and crash after watching the manditory 10 minutes of commercials at the beginning of each movie?
So if I link to a site which links to a site which unbeknownst to me links to a site which contains the DeCSS code, I am (according to the MPAA) in violation of their IP rights? Oh, please!
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Anyway, there are enough links to the DeCSS in previous stories on /. that I don't think that
my silly little post is going to make much difference. Heck,there are some people with links
to DeCSS in their signatures.
As for it being illegal to make the links, at this point the only ones who are barred from making links to DeCSS are 2600. Until slashdot has been sued and lost their own case, the links are legal here. The lawyers sending out the cease and desist letters in hopes of intimidating people into removing the links. Few of us have individually have the resources to defend ourselves from these attacks, but luckily sites like /. do.
And if enough of use our ability to wage civil
disobedience, hopefully MPAA will either lose
or give up.
I find it very unlikely that the part of this DeCSS decision outlawing linking will hold up. It would really cripple the web.
I may disapprove of what you link to, but I'll defend to the death your right to link to it.
Anyway, if it gets to the point where /. (wants|has) to remove account, they can have it.
It won't be a place I want to hang around. Of
course I don't find that possibility bloody likely.
Preventive War is like committing suicide for fear of death. - Otto Von Bismarck
This has, as the title of this post says, gone WAY overboard. Way overboard.
MP3s and other "copyrighted" files are just like any other file, a number with a base of 256. You can't copyright a number - to do so, IMO, is more of a crime than copying that number over a network. After all, trying to own a number is like trying to own the universe.Anyone who thinks they can hold claim to a number, would have to be able to state every number in the universe, and someone who could do that, would be able to unmake the universe. This unmaker would certainly not be an executive from the RIAA or MPAA.
Everything is but a number spoken by itself.
Well the problem is that a judge WOULD forbid everyone on the planet from ever using open source code in any program ever.
Not possible. No European government would give a good God damn about what Judge Fucknutz in Podunk Idaho rules. No Judge in the US has the jurisdiction to ever compell anyone outside of the country to obey him/her.
And then all of a sudden a new precident is set that screws over open source development. Welcome to the wonderful world of the commercial internet.
You can't win a war by runing away. Look at what heppened in the US during the 1960s. What good would have been done if the black people in the southern states of the US had just sat back and refused to do anything?
A commercial internet is what worries you? What do you think we have now?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
IANAL, but if the decision was with regard to linking to a DeCSS site, can it continue over to other linking actions. The decision sets s precident, but is it about handling DeCSS or all linking? I hope this will be clarified, or dealt with in appeal.
DeCSS
Preventive War is like committing suicide for fear of death. - Otto Von Bismarck
How much does DeCSS have to be modified before it's not DeCSS? Change the name? Change the code just slightly? Break the code (as in no longer works or compiles)? Where does the reach of this decision end? Obviously discussion of code breaking in general isn't illegal (yet). Is discussion of the CSS encryption scheme illegal without mentioning DeCSS? Would a DeCSS toolkit be illegal ie something designed to make a DeCSS type program? How close to the original DeCSS do you have to be before you're seen as violating the DMCA?
If the answer is "not very close" then this is good in the sense that the decision will not likely stand on appeal. That or it will likely get much more attention and get "fixed" by congress (overly optomistic?). If the answer is "real close" then the concept of renaming, slightly modifying, etc. will work well. It could be compared to designer drugs or food addatives. They fly under the radar for a period of time before they are discovered and labeled as bad. Then a slightly different version emerges and survives until it's "discovered". Is it time for UnCSS?
So, let's say I encode a copy of the DeCSS code into a message that I then encrypt using PGP and then provide a link to it for a friend to retrieve. Taking care to avoid the alternative key problems (my friend physically hands me his public key), I feel I have fairly safely encoded my communication. That's my intent, anyhow.
If the MPAA sends me a letter, do I accuse them of breaking an encryption scheme whose purpose was to control the distribution of sensitive information?
This is sad that a judge would be that clue-less or corrupt to allow such a ruling to exist. What if I modify the DE-CSS code? then it wouldnt be the same thing! or make a functional binary and distribute that.... then it isn't the code, it's a collection of 1's and 0's.. Alas, the corruption level or stupidity of the judges in this country would probably land me in prison.
Why did you get a life sentence? "I tried to watch a DVD on a Linux box."
Dont it make you proud that the United states judicial system is 100% worthless.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The federal court's area of jurisdiction determines how much impact the decision has on things. It's only applicable in Kaplan's jurisdiction (Which, I'm pretty sure is only on the East Coast, covering just the area around New York state.). Outside, another judge or the circuit or supreme court must make a decision on the situation before it's binding in those jurisdictions.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
They'll sue us under trademark law as well!
quoteth the mpaa, "linking any Internet web site, either directly or through a series of links, to any other Internet web site containing DeCSS."
it's a whole new kevin bacon game! let's see how many links deep it takes the MPAA companies to link to DeCSS...
$ wget -r -l 0 -H www.mpaa.org ; grep --recursive -i DeCSS * | grep -i href
mmm... sucking up bandwidth...
Altavista search for DeCSS
Google search for DeCSS
HotBot search for DeCSS
Are these search engines breaking the law?
"(2) linking any Internet web site, either directly or through a series of links, to any other Internet web site containing DeCSS."
Through a series of links? Common, if you try hard enough I'm sure someone can find a series of links that connects the MPAA to DeCSS (or make a series of links... THAT is ridiculous, they have to limit the "series" at a certain number of links if they want to claim this.
Why not have a DeCSS scavenger hunt. Publish a different piece of the code on different web sites with keywords for easy location and identification. Since a fraction of the code is insufficient to create a functioning decoder, none of the web sites would be in violation of the DMCA. Any attempt to sue would surely result in First Amendment restraint since each snippet of code would constitute an expression of free speech.
Can you get busted for singing a link to DeCSS?
How about saying a link? What about recording yourself saying the link and linking to that?
Egad - Now I can't get the tune out of my head!
for Content UnScrambling System. :) Makes more sense than DeCSS anyway.. De Content Scrambling System?
Among their demands is that the ISP's
3) advise us of the name and physical address of the person operating this site;
Surely that would be illegal ??!!
I have a compilation of argumented links here. Over 20 search engines so far.
/* this is where the sig goes */
I've been to dental school. Is there really that much of a difference?
Yes, you are not able to force someone to come in for a thorough reaming just by sending them a letter.
Weeeeel... since we've got a pretty good human genetic map, why doesn't someone just find a way to remap DeCSS to human chromosones?
----
----
Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
Just the domain will drive the MPAA crazy! Remember VERIZON registered VERIZONsucks.com so 2600 registered verizonREALLYsucks.com!
useDeCSS.com
iloveDeCSS.com
DeCSStasteslikechicken.com
got 70 bucks?
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
Start here, at the MPAA's "Related Sites" page.
Look near the bottom of that page, and follow the link called "United States Department of State, Office of the Coordinator for Business Affairs," which will lead you here.
Now, click that ugly ass purple "Business FAQ" button, which will lead you here
Scroll down until you find a link to "State and Local Government on the Net", in the answer to the fifth question from the bottom. That will lead you here.
Now, there's a big 'ol box on the left that lets you search Google! Type in "DeCSS", and find a mirror near you! So boys and girls, let me ask one little question:
Q - Who should go to jail?
A - The MPAA and the United States Government!
Ya know, I should be an attorney instead of an engineer... this is just too easy...
--
--
Just lurking, thanks!
Luckily, Search Engines such as Google search websites located across the globe. I am darn sure all those .ru, .de, .ei, .ie, .etc's out there couldn't give a rat's fart about U.S. law. The MPAA will have to work with its subsidiary organizations to go after scofflaws in countries outside of the U.S. Meanwhile, I can still get the code right here in the USA of the NWO.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
Why? Because it is formatted, in HTML, to be a giant ASCII-art version of the OpenDVD logo, expressing my belief that DVDs should be open and viewable by anyone, anywhere, free from restrictions, on any OS.
--
-Esme
It might seem redundant to discuss search engines, but it is important.
In principle, all the search engines could be sued by the MPAA, because their databases contain the DeCSS code. In addition, unless they specifically figure out a way to avoid linking to all possible versions of the DeCSS code (including compressed, uuencoded, etc.) they violate the ban on links.
Basically, in order for the judge's decision to be upheld, all search engines must be put out of business.
In my understanding, this legally protects them from being sued. They are, after all, an ISP - right?
sig not found
why havent they sued all the search engines? they link to DeCSS, and information on it.
> As enemies the WTO and UN, backed if necessary by the military might of the entire western world, are truly fearsome.
Well since we appear to have just jumped off the deep end.... The Western military is impressive against fortified divisions, bomb factories, airports, ports, etc. Air supierority is extremely impressive also, dominating the skys as it sees fit.
But, the Western military falls apart when attempting to engage non fortified mobile enemies. Take note of the past several years worth of "Peace Keeping" activity where this military-might proved ineffective. Any sufficiently organized revolution is going to take the Geneva convention and all other forms of "proper military conduct" and toss them out the window. But I've said enough already.
M.G.
Excessive forking causes un-wanted children.
Where is the government when megacorp cartels like the MPAA start using blatantly illegal bully tactics against citizens? Isn't protection against this the main justification behind establishing governments and paying them taxes?
It's times like this when I wonder if there truly exists a political idea for a government that both stays out of the private lives and property rights of citizens (ala Libertarianism), that will also keep the corps in check. Currently, NONE of the political systems in the world do this. For example:
Capitalism- Corps rule
Socialism- replaces the corps with the government doing the same thing or worse
Republic/Democracy/Parlaiment- Allows the corps to buy influence.
Libertarian Reoublic- Would maximize the influnce of judges, as everything would be regulated in the courts.
Just some thoughts... Maybe we Slashdotters can come up with a form of government that can keep government out of people's lives yet keep corps in check
In 2000 America, is a non-lawyer truly free?
I fancy myself as a bit of a weekend tinkerer and I cordially invite all Slashdot readers to try, and to comment upon the below improved version of DeCSS called "PooPoo". PooPoo is somewhat similar to DeCSS but subtly different.
The MPAA will likely have a hard time scraping all the PooPoo from the Internet but, hey, shit happens right? One might imagine MPAA lawyers in their polished Oxfords having a hard time with PooPoo in court too, as lines like "we've got to stop the flood of PooPoo!" and "right now PooPoo is floating around everywhere" will likely fail to amuse federal judges after awhile.
Get PooPoo! It's the SHIT!
>On August 17, 2000, a federal district court in
>the Southern District of New York confirmed that
>offering, providing, or trafficking in DeCSS, or
>any other device designed to circumvent CSS,
>violates the DMCA.
Unless, until, there is a supreme court decision saying essentially the same thing, isn't this decision and the precedent set confined to the jurisdiction of this court? Therefore, shouldn't anyone with an ounce of sense tell the lawyers to go (insert verb of choice here) themselves?
BTW, do any of those MPAA members offer free web pages? Sounds like the right place for new mirrors.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Start a campaign to have EVERYONE put 'deCSS' in the meta tags of all html docs... there'd be so many false hits, the MPAA'd HAVE to read every page...
Perhaps all of us slash dot readers should put a link up on our own webpages, how can they go after everyone?
I wonder what would happen if we linked it in our posts to slashdot? who would be held accountable, slashdot or the author?
How do they really expect to stop people from finding the src for DeCSS given the fact that you can get links, src, and all sorts of other fun stuff from other avenues? (ftp, icq, irc,.. etc)
-- MrMud
> afraid. Imagine how quickly the tide could turn against MPAA if they tried to push around Yahoo! or AOL.
That's precisely the problem, though.
MPAA will sue whom it pleases, when it pleases. The Yahoos and Googles and AOLs don't have to worry; MPAA won't bother suing them. MPAA's goal is to put the fear of God into the little guys. Us. The ones nobody cares enough about to defend. When they've chilled reverse-engineering for the sake of interoperability (even though explicitly permitted by DMCA) out of the public eye, they'll have won. The search engines can only index what gets developed and released.
Of course, they'll never do it - the next DeCSS-type application will be released anonymously, through real anonymous channels, as opposed to pseudonymous channels. A post on USENET via an anonymizing remailer through a poorly-configged NNTP server that doesn't include NNTP-Posting-Host: for instance.
Sigh. Didn't we go through this in way the hell back 1995 with alt.religion.scientology and the internal cult docs that wound up mirrored around the world?
It seems the only difference between then and now is that we're up against the part of the movie industry that isn't run by the Cult. (Although MPAA is just as clueless about how the 'net works as the Cult was, they seem to be somewhat more adaptable, albeit far less entertaining. ;-)
I wonder what happens if someone reads DeCSS into the Swedish Parliamentary records. Let's see the MPAA try to take that down! They can arrest a Norwegian, but can they shut down an entire foreign government?
It reminds me of Arthur Miller's "The Crucible". When Abigail implicated her powerless enemys and the downtrodden of the village, the Powers That Be (in this case the tribunal) did her bidding. As soon as she got too big for her britches and had the audacity to threaten the head of the tribunal, he quickly shut her down, she was forced to flee, and the Salem Witch Trials were over.
My advice to the MPAA: Be careful who you step on, because if you step on a gorilla, he'll smash your face in.
h t t p : / / w i l d s u r g e . a 2 0 0 0 . nu / d e c s s /
or these
h t t p : / / h o m e . e a r t h l i n k . n e t / ~ t i l l e y r w / d e c s s - c o d e . h t m l
Ah fuck it, perhaps you should just click here.
And if you don't like me MPAA, fuck you. Sue me.
No matter how many copies of the DeCSS float about, it won't change the MPAA's ability to sue. Yeah, it'll take them forever and a day to go after every single infringer, but the fact remains that it will still be illegal.
The judge ruled that "any technology which circumvents CSS is illegal", by virtue of the DMCA.
That, I believe, is where the real problem is... fighting the MPAA (regardless of how one goes about it) won't amount to a hill of beans as long as the DMCA, or at least this interpretation of it, is allowed to remain.
Until the DMCA is thrown out, or at least significantly altered so that this interpretation cannot be construed in court, no independantly developed (esp. open source) DVD players can ever legally exist.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Time to get accounts on every available free web page service and put DeCSS on them.
:-)
Yes, I know this is an ignorant answer and would result mainly in a huge pain in the ass for the administrators of the free services in question...but maybe we could use only ones provided by MS and AOL?
Great!
So mailreaders that helpfully linkify (I think hotmail does this) things that look like addresses turn formerly legal documents to illegal ones? Mind you, that's email, not http, but still.
Most definitely they should be charged! Those pirating scoundrals, burn them all. In fact, I will testify that I got my copy from a link in www.nytimes.com. Sign me up for that witness list.
Brian
Search engines don't fall under this ruling because they don't know they are linking to "illegal" material
...is legal, but...
...is not.
Perhaps someone ought to let them know, then. With apologies for the tone of that response, I do think the concern about a legal ruling on linking isn't completely FUD.
My concern is that any law that is enforceable based on the intent of the offender can be abusively (selectively) enforced. I'm sure there are a number of people out there who would be happier if 2600 were silenced. This may be the case, but it should not be why 2600 is litigated for this violation, and others are not.
Linking itself, and hypertext, is the foundation of the web as we know it today. We're posting on the web now, and not gopher, because of the ease of navigation brought on by hypertext on the web. Free links propagated the web. Restricting links conceivably could irreparably damage it. Therefore, it is reasonable to be concerned about limitations on that ability to freely link, for reasons other than fear, uncertainty and doubt.
Lastly, it is interesting that the definition of a link is the href, and not the address.
So...
http://www.lemuria.org/DeCSS/
http://www.lemuria.org/DeCSS/
I guess it just depends on what the definition of link is.
---
"The Constitution...is not a suicide pact."
"Life. Don't talk to me about life."
Obviously, the outrage here is the length to which this can be taken. Back in the day, would I have been libel for linking to 2600 because they then linked to DeCSS? For that matter, you could hold search engines that return responses to DeCSS links for not filtering out those pages. Hyperlinking is as much a form of constitutionally-protected speech as a journalist taking pictures of someone shooting heroin or a newspaper providing a map of an area known to have crackhouses. Simply because they point to some illegal act (perhaps easing someone's ability to break the law), cannot mean that the acts themselves are illegal. Hyperlinking is personal expression and ought to have the same constitutional protections as other speech.
Can what is formed say to that who formed it, "Why have you made me thus?"
I develop a software called "Public Bookmark" Generator, and well it is designed to help people post their bookmarks on a web page to share links. Now let's say a PBM user link to a page that somehow link a second page that link to the DeCSS code ... Then what ?
That sound kind of stupid but you can not be responsible for links to links to links ?
-- Martial MICHEL
I seem to remember a study (may have been done by CAIDA) in which it was theorized that the internet is only 19 links "wide".
This was meant to mean that any site can be reached through following 19 links or less from any other site. I would guess that this would not apply to linkless pages, but otherwise wouldn't every site containing any kind of valid link link to DeCSS through "a series of links"?
Just my two cents...
--dgc
What about a copy that does something very, very similar? Link to it from all over the place, then just say it's some test code for some stupid encryption you were playing with a while back.
Just an idea...
Jason
Yeah, it's readable, but I just tried to scan the back of the shirt. It doesn't come out very well (@ 100 dpi anyway). You can definately see the code if the shirt is being worn though. I'd say it's about a 12 or 14 pt font.
-B
benjones@superutility.net
-B
They are already being sued.
It would seem, in the hypothetical case you have outlined, MPAA would go after each party who knowingly did this. If you knew your text would be turned into links, then you are at fault. The mail program is just doing what it was supposed to. The user who requested the info, knowingly requested info regarding the 'Criminal Code'.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
Submachinegun Designer's Handbook
Home-Built Claymore Mines
Breath of the Dragon: Flamethrowers
Successful Armed Robbery
And this is just for starters. The reason these manuals could be sold through the mail was that the catalogs always stated that they were "for educational use only". If you actually went and did something illegal with the knowledge you gained, the company wasn't legally liable. Has anyone considered using a similar disclaimer on any page offering or linking to the DeCSS code? It's worth a shot, and there's got to be some legal precedent on the issue.
Some script kiddie who wanted to be 'leet made a cheesy virus and incorporated DeCSS into the virus, but did no damage, so DeCSS would be on like, millions of computers?
Just a thought.
Netjak.com independent reviews of domestic & import video ga
What if I leave the link out, but just tell you where it is. I have not linked to the document and the only thing I have given is a written description of where it is...
Still illegal ?
I particularly love the bit where they're looking for the names and addresses of people posting the code. "Tell us where they live." Organizations have been sending out threatening letters to shut down websites for ages. We can't stop them from doing it any more than they can stop people from posting DeCSS.
"Property is theft, therefore theft must be property, right?"
I suppose there are... I can think of at least one. :)
What happens if DeCSS is put in the KEO time capsule? Will the MPAA seek to have it destroyed?
(stupid short subject line, forcing me to use obscure dialects...)
Is it the DeCSS program specifically that they claim violates the DMCA, or is it any mere description of how to decrypt DVDs?
I'm curious about whether this is an "is source code speech?" issue.
--------
Has anyone entered the DeCSS code into the KEO database?
http://www.keo.org/uk/your_message.html
That way DeCSS can survive 50000 years...
Use Zope!
Now, I'm not saying mail bomb. I'm saying well thought out, to the point, well-informed messages. I mean, this situation is outrageous.
Does anyone think this might help? I mean, the direct outrcry of thousands of outraged voices cannot be ignored, especially with elections coming up, and hopefully a few candidates that might actually pay attention to what the voters say.
If something like this doesn't work, then we are witnessing the complete and total breakdown of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. I was under the impression that this kind of government "shall not perish from this earth."
Now, if you will excuse me, I have some emails to write.
Cheers, Me.
This post has been spell-checked with Tipo-Fnider1.07b2
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Let's start a "work boycott" of the MPAA and the RIAA.
Let's make it impossible for them to hire decent tech help.
Techies everywhere: UNITE. Do not work for the RIAA or the MPAA or any of thier member companies. If they can't get any good tech employees, they will be stuck in the 1980s forever!
This is interesting. In a rather recent verdict here in Sweden, links to mp3's were found to be legal. Meanwhile, in the US, links are found to be illegal. If this holds up in higher court, this could lead to a lot of spinoff-lawsuits. Think links to mp3-sites, links to sites with warez, etc.
<irony mode=on>I wonder how long before the US outlaws search-engines...<irony mode=off>
What if you have a web site that has a CGI script that e-mails a list of links (in plain text) to the user. When the user gets it in their e-mail program, most of them will make URLs live. Does that count as being illegal? If it is, is it the CGI script, the mail program (for making them live), or the user for clicking on the "E-mail some links" button?
I'm writing you this letter through actual tears of distress at the disheartening developments and outcomes of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Never in my life have I seen a single piece of legislation give so much power to corporations at the expense of consumer rights and individual liberties. Of all the amendments in our Bill Of Rights one has stood out above all others. For good reason it is the First Amendment. Our founding fathers did not make it the 3rd, 6th or 10th. In the most recent case, Judge Kaplan in the DeCSS vs. MPAA trial ruled that not only was source code (which can be written on a T-shirt or even spoken) not protected speech, but that even linking or pointing people to that code is also illegal!
I'm not sure what I am asking you do only that if you don't already understand the frightening implications of these trends, I'm urging you to do so now before its too late. Since it was Congress who passed this draconian piece of legislation, it is Congress who must overturn it. I would like to see legislation that again puts private citizens first, and corporations second. Laws that protect the liberties and freedoms of individuals against over-zealous corporate interests. It must finally be asked if intellectual property protections as strict as those found in the DMCA are worth sacrificing the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution?
On the Internet there can be no genuine freedom of speech unless source code is a protected form of speech. This principle is attacked however by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in his ruling that, "society must be able to regulate the use and dissemination of code." The judge then enjoined Eric Corley, publisher of 2600 magazine, from assisting his readers from even linking to the code that unlocks DVD content. My head is spinning from the implications of all this. No longer is the criminal itself culpable, but discussing the details of it or pointing to people who do is also now criminal. Such a legal precedent could easily bring a typical journalist to court for the simple act of point out a newly discovered crack house! In the realm of anti-piracy/pro-intellectual property legislation, dangerous precendents like these are being set in courts cases like Napster and DeCSS. No longer are the people doing the pirating liable, but any technology that has the potential to be used for piracy is also illegal. This same logic could easily apply to the Internet itself. It's equivalent to making cars illegal because they have the potential of being used by criminals to conduct bank robberies or kidnappings. Unless I am corrected, technology has never been the culprit, only the user of such technology is culpable. In a murder trial we don't hold the knife trial, only the user of the knife. But now with the help of statutes within the DMCA, people like the MPAA and RIAA are trying to outlaw any and all technology that has the potential to facilitate piracy. If successful, we could say goodbye to the PC, the fax machine, the telephone, the Internet as we currently know and love them, as they all have the potential to be used for piracy. And here I suspect is the real agenda, which is to outlaw any technology that doesn't give them complete control over all its content. As such complete control would be the only sure fire method of fully defeating piracy. This is a chilling prospect. Imagine everything we say, do and watch through media is tightly controlled, filtered and censored through the power of monopolized corporate interests.
Dangerously, a consortium of companies called the Copy Protection Technical Working Group (CPTWG), are already discussing plans to make such a reality possible by changing the entire array of media technologies and internet protocols. Changing the technology is one thing, but making it illegal to create anything else is another. I don't know about you, but the thought of corporations forbidding individuals from producing and distributing media or building their own computers or running their own software should be completely repugnant to anyone with principles of a free society. To legally support the position that the common man is fit only for mindless consumption is a despicable point of view, and to forbid otherwise is a shocking development that speaks volumes about the perspective and motivation of current corporate culture. Assuming corporations do manage to pull this off, then the individual user will no longer be able to distribute their own music or creative work freely online, as doing so would by definition mean using a format easily copyable and cheaply distributed - a technology they want to outlaw! Their reasoning is if such a format exists, as it does now in the case of mp3, then pirates will use it to duplicate copyright works. This is true, just as the automobile allows criminals to conduct bank heists or kidnappings. Is this reason enough to outlaw automobiles?
It all boils down to one salient fact. Now that duplication costs have fallen to zero, what you have here is nothing less than a corporate power grab attempting to create artificial scarcity where none exists. A desperate attempt to maintain previous monopolies of media distribution and revenue streams in the face of advancing technology. Luckily for us, the Pony Express didn't try to the same with the advent of the Telegraph.
Advancing technology has always changed the nature of society and the rules of business while bringing prosperity to millions. These new peer-to-peer file sharing technologies promise to do the same. May you have the wisdom to see past the current struggles of business in transition, by allowing these liberating technologies to flourish.
Respectfully Yours,
www.enthea.org
Yahoo: 1 hit
Altavista: 33,106 hits
Google: 50,100 hits
HotBot: 3,600 hits
Lycos: 14,295 hits
Deja: 1,450 hits
ScrubTheWeb: 2,201 hits
Slashdot: 69 hits
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
It's just a very handy utility for web developers: http://www.pigdog.org/decss/
A monkey is doing the real work for me.
It's simple:
Set up a P.O. Box to which people are instructed to send $1 (to cover expenses), plus the address they wish to have the source code mailed to. The provider then ships a printed copy of the source code embedded in an essay (of social and political merit) about the dangers of viewing source code as anything less than speech.
No violation of previous precedent (even non-binding) exists, and the first amendment argument is suddenly on very well-established ground.
Furthermore, the MPAA legal team gets to jump through the extra hoops of subpoenaing the P.O. Box provider, attempting to identify the parties actually responsible for the distribution of the source (be smart-- create a "collective" box or something-- don't rent it in the name of whomever is responsible for the distribution), etc. The internet makes for easy access to information and communication-- a dream for anyone attempting to shut down (scare into submission) a lot of information sources at once. Let's give them a bit of leg work to do.
---sig---
Anyone with a long enough memory - http://slashdot.org/yro/00/05/20/045253.shtml - will remember when Oxford University pulled a student's DeCSS page, only to discover it wasn't offering the real DeCSS anyway. It seems lawyers have some special powers over normal human beings, allowing them to trample on the rights of any they want.
Does my bum look big in this?
Although I'm sure it's been beaten to death already, I do remember reading somewhere (www.2600.com I think) that the judge who presided over this case had done legal consulting for some or all of the member companies of the MPAA. When asked (if memory serves) the judge stated that he had no conflict of interest. Can a judge actually do that? If so, I think the law needs a major overhaul in that department, if not, then why hasn't this ruling been challenged in a higher court?
-----You've some nice troops 'ere colonel...
If they don't compile and test each alleged infraction, and they sue you, could you countersue for damages?
Any number of changes from subtle syntax errors to replacing whole modules with the first ammendment could be done to make it legal under the DMCA.
Just make sure you don't include any instructions on how to fix it.
What if they sue you for linking to something that diddn't work?
I bet we could get about 100 Million dollars from the MPAA this way if they persued a bunch of us.
Could someone who has post (here, or as a link) a description, in English, of the algorithm works? Such a description is definately speech; is no longer a trade secret; and is certainly not a mechanism for circumventing access control.
From that description, I think I'd like to code up `fair-use-dvd.c' Others might like to do the same sort of thing.
What if you put a link on your page that says this is not a link to the DeCSS source code?
Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.
Much like the numbers channels on HAM radio, someone needs to start reciting DeCSS. Imagine going throug random stations, and all of a sudden you hear a monotone voice saying...
#ifndef __css_descramble_h_
#define __css_descramble_h_
struct playkey {
int offset:
unsigned char key[5];
};
extern int css_decrypttitlekey(unsigned char *tkey, unsigned char *dkey, struct playkey **pkey);
extern void css_descramble(unsigned char *sec,unsigned char *key);
#endif
BTW, is it legal to post portions of DeCSS? How about linking to them?
I don't think descramble.mp3 was taken down--it just seems to be getting /.ed, (as does the trisomy mirror) so I've mirrored it myself.
I haven't seen the dead trees version of the NYT article that had a picture of the T-shirt, but somebody else may have.... Was the code readable?
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
This sets a dangerous precedent, that search engines could be prosecuted for linking to 'illegal' material.
Steven Murdoch.
web: http://www.bigfoot.com/~murdomania/
Steven Murdoch.
web: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/sjm217/
Excellent idea. What's the procedure for getting an RFC number. DeCSS non-linking exchange protocol or something?
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
What if I post a greatly enlarged picture of the T-shirt on my site? Or maybe a link to such a picture?
-B
benjones@superutility.net
-B
You also can't link to someone else's file. A simple extension to the above.
Now you can't link to another site that has a link, directly or indirectly . So if I have a link to CNN's website, which has carried links to DeCSS-related sites, I am in violation of the law. If I link to ANY site on the 'Net anywhere, which has a single link to another site, ultimately there will be a chain of links to DeCSS source code.
Might as well shut down the entire Internet. Is the RIAA going to use this to sue everyone who has ever written a single web page with a hyperlink to any other site?
Coincidence is the Superstition of Science
What's that smell? Ah, that's my karma burning...
There really isn't a jurisdiction in terms of where in the country you are to a federal law, and likewise the same applies to the decisions of a court.
Basically, Kaplan screwed up by not declaring the DMCA illegal (yes, he is allowed to do that) and by not excusing himself due to bias.
--
Ben Kosse
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
Well, in U.S. v. O'Brien (1969), the actual illegal action was the "destruction or mutilation" of a draft card. In Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942), the actual illegal action was "any offensive, derisive, or annoying word to any other person who is lawfully in the street." The illegal actions in the DeCSS case are:
Copying the movie for non-fair use purposes.
Breaking encryption used for copy-protection purposes without the permission of the copyright holder.
Distributing tools to aid in breaking decryption used for copy-protection without the permission of the copyright holder.
The Free Speech component is the distribution of the code. The first is already illegal, and as for the second, there isn't really any constitutional protection on methods of reading, so it can "safely" be limited.
No one's managed to make the Anarchist's Cookbook illegal yet, have they? And anytime a building blows up, the media gets to report about how they made the bombs, yes? This is only differnet because it doesn't even cause physical damage to people.
I honestly have no clue how come the Anarchist's Cookbook isn't illegal. Doesn't it incite violence? I know that that's illegal. I don't honestly know why it isn't illegal. Maybe there isn't a law against distributing bomb-making plans. I don't see why there isn't, though, as far as I understand constitutional law.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Interesting... In a way, the MPAA is going out of their way to prevent anyone that doesn't run Windows from viewing their movies.
"In a suprise press release, Microsoft has announced its previously hidden alliance with the MPAA for the past year. Microsoft has provided funding for the MPAA's legal fees. However, the details on how Microsoft benefits from the deal are not known at this time..."
End of lesson. You may press the button.
I have a novel idea. Since the MPAA wants DeCSS, why don't we give them more copies than they ever want. Okay, it's not really a denial of service attack, but the jist of the idea is that everyone with DeCSS should send one (and exactly one) email of complaint (to make the whole thing legitimate) to the movie studios sponsoring DeCSS. Included attached to this e-mail would be a copy of DeCSS. There would be so many legitimate grievances flowing into the studios that their mail servers would get bogged down. And because each person would be sending exactly one message with one email attachment (as opposed to flooding the site) prosecuting the individual for a denial of service attack would be difficult.
what would happen if the DeCSS source-code was distributed worldwide via an "I Love You" virus type vehicle? No malicious code attached, just the source-code and an explanation about the true implications of the case explained in layman's terms("fair use", "freedom of speech", etc.). Basically, with the cascading effect of every OE user's address book used to forward it to others, propagation should be high. Use the VBS drawback for good instead of evil.
The only drawback I can see is that it might be construed to support the MPAA's assertion that this is not about our rights, but about a bunch of "dirty pirates" infringing on their copyright.
I wonder if there is anyone out there that can acclompish this and not get caught?
DISCLAIMER: I do not condone doing this. This is all purely conjecture, and in no way should be contrued as a request for action.
How about a new feature for Mozilla:
If an "http://someaddress.tld/path.html" is found in plain text on a web page (i.e. not in <a href="...">...</a> tags) then mark it up as a link anyway, as is done for such links in plain text emails in the mail reader.
Then we won't even need to drag & drop the link into the address bar to activate plain text links (like the ones 2600 are still allowed to have).
2600 can't be expected to take down the plain text version of an address, as that's even _more_ restrictive than the current ban on linking. (And if they were restricted from this, the free speech issues would be even _stronger_ on their side)
And Mozilla can't be held responsible, as this is just an extra piece of functionality that helps in the general case, and which is mostly implemented anyway (in the mailnews module).
Pity Moz's in feature freeze. And a pity my Copious Free Time (tm) appears to have dried up right now, otherwise I might be tempted to grab a copy of the source, plow through it & have a go myself...
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
For non americans, and americans who have forgotten hisotry: in the 1850s it was legal to own black people, and require them to do labor for you in some southern States of the US. In Minnesota this practice was illegal. A southern person brought his slave to Minnesota. The US surpreeme court eventially ruled that the black man could be legally owned in Minnesota! Soon after the Civil war was faught and eventially eliminated the practice of owning people in all states of the US.
Notice several things: the above case went a lot farther then we currently are. The above case when lost in the courts wasn't over yet. Lets hope we don't have to go to war to keep our rights, but rest assured some folks are willing to if need be.
OK, so it's illegal to mirror and link DeCSS?
No problem. Let's all mirror and link DeCSS.
After a little searching, I found a site that has developed a nice smokescreen. It's a program, called DeCSS, which removes Cascading Style Sheets from HTML pages. Comes complete with a mirror and linking kit. Nothing illegal about that.
Check out my site for a DeCSS mirror and instructions.
-Todd
---
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
heh, good point.
but why should the MPAA have a monopoly on hypocrisy?
"I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes."
-- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
JOIN !LINK CLUB!
Don't blame me - I voted for Howard Dean. http://dean2004.blogspot.com
dig @dmca.really.fuckingsucks.net dmca.really.fuckingsucks.net. axfr |
grep decss | sort | cut -b5-36 |
perl -e 'while(){print pack("H32",$_)}' |
gunzip -c
DeCSS can be found here, and I take responsibility for it since I placed it their.
Also, the copyright is GPL, so anyone who thinks I am breaking the law, go fuck yourself.
vinylat33
--- Open standards. Open source. Open minds. The command line is the front line.
Society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither. Thomas Jefferson
There are some great bomb-building instructions on many sites on the web. I imagine it is legal to link to them -- even though the instructions have the potential to create physical harm!
There are many sites on the internet re-distributing the DeCSS source. If i link to eighter it or documents describing the technical aspects of DeCSS, I am liable for causing damages?
The two examples range between two extreme degrees. I consider plans for physical devices more harmful than plans for viewing information. But we must face that much of the world we encounter is capitalist. The MPAA recognizes that its winning this case is crucial to funding its continually increasing profits. This is not about "what is right." It's about "limiting control of the playing devices" -- though not directly. Limiting control to copyrighted works is an indirect ploy to get the most profit. They have found a way and have successfully sought support of the law in their favor.
Like the MPAA, we cannot say "what they're doing is wrong" because, under the law, they are correct. The only way to make good for us is to get the DMCA dismissed or rewritten. As US Citizens, we are not above the law, thus we cannot ignore the law. The only way we can do something is to support changing the law or getting directly involved by running for political office..
I'm not about to discuss how, but this is all we need to do... "of the people, by the people, for the people" -Abraham Lincoln.. if you don't get anything out of that quote you should think about it for a while..
I think we can all agree that constitutes a link. But how about ?
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
Dear MailBox Mania:
We have become aware that the owner(s) of P.O. Box 6102 has been using that P.O. Box to distribute literature containing computer code that is used to circumvent the encyption method used on DVD's.
The owner(s) are in direct violation of the DMCA. You will hand over the name and physical address of these people to us.
Thank you,
Murderers, Pugilists, Assassins, and, Arsonists (MPAA)
It wouldn't fly. The MPAA would actually have to *gasp* get a court order and would be prevented from making a blanket demand.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
Is this not the equivalent of giving up and heading underground? We are dealing with an issue that is so much larger than a simple decryption algorithm than it is almost incomprehensible. The fact that 2600 was sued over DeCSS is almost incidental, they were sued for linking and were told by a US judge that it was illegal. Do we want to be in the position of splitting up all of the content that someone (or some company) finds objectionable? To borrow conceptually from the NRA: Today they'll take away our DeCSS, tomorrow they'll take something else. They'll do it so slowly that we'll never notice.
The real evil of this ruling is that it makes it possible for a company to prohibit you from disseminating information if they don't agree with it, never mind what is being done with that information. Can't we just focus on how to stop the seemingly endless parade of freedoms that are disappearing rather than the myraid of ways to make it hard for the MPAA to stop DeCSS?
Icebox
A lot of people have pointed out that "ah, it doesn't matter, we can point to search engines that locate the code", or something of that kind.
Only this doesn't work, because if every direct link to the code is removed (I'm not saying it will be - I'm just pointing out that the argument is flawed), the search engines probably won't index it forever.
try http://www.2600.net
some filters miss that one
Visit DC2600
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
As Eric Corley points out (rather sarcastically) on the 2600 website, what about search engines that link to deCSS? can they be held accountable? After all, when you type in a search at google, the site simply produces a list of LINKS to whatever you searched for. The criminals!
Brought to you by Frobozz Magic Penguin Fodder.
Isn't the primary issue here that the MPAA is trying to copyright a randomly generated key?
Should a random sequence of bytes really be copyrightable?
I'm basing this question on the assumpation the DeCSS code using a standard encryption method not owned by the MPAA. Correct me if I'm wrong...
1) The order only applies to the defendants and persons acting in concert with them. If you dont fall into that catagory you are under no legal obligation to cease posting DeCSS. However, you may become the next test case. In otherwords, an acedemic institution would be the perfect test case for the free speach issues raised in this case - no stigma of "hacking." 2) The linking portion of the order against the defendants specifically states: that the link must done "knowingly...for the purpose of disseminating DeCSS." In otherwords, if you link to a site without knowing it links to a DeCSS site and without the purpose of directing people tothe code, it wouldnt count even if the order applied to you.
In ancent Rome everything was illegal until there was a precedent for it. Basically the first person to do something got punished and then after that just about anyone could do it because it had been done before. I think the 2600 has set the precedent for this case. They stuck to there guns and kept the link up under all of the pressure that could be brought against them. I will go home tonight and put a link from my page to the source, Will you? Remember the first acts of defiance are the most important ones. It is up to us, fellow /. readers, to get the ball rolling and tell them that we will not stand for this, we will not quietly sit by and let them take away one of the fundemental rights of the internet simply because they used poor encryption. We will not be made to pay for their mistake! Post the source code on your site! Link to the Code! Together we can take on the man, and basically make it not worth his time to pursue this any further!
___________________
___________________
He who laughs last... Thinks slowest
While this move may come as a shock to some, sources at the company are optimistic that it will convey the appearance that Dizney isn't merely playing consumers against content providers for profit. While Dizney.com's Managing Director (who is also gho.com's Executive Vice President) couldn't be reached for comment, sources in his office gave AP this message:
The open-source community, which backs DeCSS as part of the LiViD Linux video project, was ecstatic over the news. "We have been wanting to take large corporations to court for some time over their gross negligence about our issues. I'm happy as hell they saved us the trouble" one open-source insider told us.-- Dave
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
I'd be willing to bet, they would only threaten a little guy.
Fight Spammers!
Maybe the MPAA will shut down AOL.
+ source+code
http://search.aol.com/dirsearch.adp?query=DeCSS
...and then some good would come out of this mess.
http://decss.idolatre.org
There's no link to DeCSS there, no instructions on how to get DeCSS, just my thoughts about the DeCSS
persecutions.
The hiding of information contained in css-auth.tar by putting an index.html in the directory to be displayed instead of the directory's content could easily be circumvented, but I FORBID anyone to do that.
actually, it's " !Link Club ", as our aim is Subversive Civil Obedience. While linking would be civil disobedience, !linking is Obedience to the letter, but not the spirit...
JOIN !LINK CLUB!
Don't blame me - I voted for Howard Dean. http://dean2004.blogspot.com
IANAL, but...Did you read the exact wording of that MPAA letter? They want you to remove the illegal material at that URL.. It didn't say that the file had to be taken off the machine. Just rename the file, folks, and let 'em waste another $0.33 on yet another letter.
Also, what's the status on off-shore sites?
This may be redundant so pardon me if it is, otherwise:
What does the MPAA stand for? Do you think the MPAA endorses any movies that have anything to do with the following topics:
1. Freedom of speech
2. Censorship
3. Patriotic spirit and the ideals of the US
Probably not right? No f***ing way man! C'mon, they are the biggest freaking backstabing two-faced f***ers of them all. Geez, I'm willing to waste some karma for that comment, but I think its true. The MPAA needs to wise up a little. They can't stop DeCSS completely. There will always be e-mail, then ftp, ng's, etc. If someone needs the code, its out there.
I'll be putting a mirror up shortly just to show my support. I don't even have a DVD player for my Linux box yet, but when I get one I want to be able to use it. Is that asking too much!!! I don't give a shit about copying. It's all about being able to watch my fucking DVDs that I fucking payed for. I shouldn't be forced to have to have Windows to watch DVDs. Thanks to all who made it possible to let watch DVDs on Linux.
This sounds pretty silly, but go to Lycos' FTP Search and type in DeCSS and boom, DeCSS.zip is the first thing you find.
This whole thing is starting to get that "I am so sick of it I am gonna vomit" Lewinski feel to it.
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
So, a link to DeCSS is illegal, eh? And so is a link to a link to a link to ... DeCSS. How about a link to a page offering cryptographic analysis of CSS encryption, with the understanding that certain 'examples' will be provided? The link in fact DOES point to a page containing a cryptographic analysis of said encryption, and provides some (innocuous / faulty / whatever) examples, but refreshes in 3 seconds, taking the user to a page with DeCSS.zip Obviously, the owner of such a page would get a letter because the MPAA doesn't care whether they have the legal right to bully others around, but would such a letter carry legal weight?
Another scenario:
What if a page of mine were to be attacked by some script kiddie who happened to post DeCSS there? If the MPAA couldn't prove I was aware of the content, am I still responsable?
At what level of removal from the actual DeCSS code does one become an innocent again? Unless I misread something (possible, since I wasn't looking for it), it's not illegal to have a copy of DeCSS, just to provide it to others. If I talk to a friend of mine about the case, making reference to a printed copy I happen to own, and then leave the room, leaving it on a table, am I guilty of 'trafficking, etc.' in DeCSS if my friend snags it? What about a floppy?
If willingly providing the code is illegal, how about theft of the code?
If Microsoft can claim that publicly-available documents are intellectual property and can control access to them accordingly, can I post DeCSS somewhere under password protection (password = 'password' or 'DeCSS' or other easily-guessable string) for 'my own personal use'? A password is about as worthwhile protection scheme as CSS, so it's covered by the DMCA, right? So I can claim I am effectively controlling access, right? And since I'm the only one who knows the password (anyone who so much as guesses is doing so illegally, trying to circumvent the intellectual property control scheme, right?), I'm not providing it to the public, right? And if I told a friend about it, and s/he posted on a page that going to my page and using the password 'DeCSS' could get a copy, that's not my problem, right?
The MPAA has made rediculously wide-ranging claims as to their intellectual property rights, some of which have been upheld, but can they really expect to be able to stop every possible distribution mechanism without to resort to something so all-encompassing that not even the most dim-witted (or technologically illiterate, to be fair) judge wouldn't dream of passing it? Does that greedy, holier-than-thou organization really expect to outwit, intimidate, bully, and/or legally force over 5 billion people to cower before their demands?!? Yikes! Why do such people always end up in positions of power?
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
If I link to a page [that links to a page]* that links to a DeCss, am I in trouble?
I've proposed a change to the GPL which would penalise organisations that seek to forbid hyperlinking to open source software.
IMHO, one of the more harmful points of the whole mess has been overlooked. In the "demands" section of the letter that is being sent, item 3 demands "advise us of the name and physical address of the person operating this site;"
Not, that the whole thing isn't damaging to individual privacy, but this line is just scary.
Hmm, guess they're going to be sending out hit squads to the homes next.
i find this doubtful, especially following the MPAAs fevered attack on DeCSS. If you link to a site that links to a site, you may not state directly that you can get DeCSS there, but i'm sure the MPAA would be more than happy to slap you with intent, or implied intent. I don't know if that would work for search engines, but I could see it for linking to a DeCSS links page.
http://www.nakedandfree.com
Second, everyone b&ms on that slashdot or yahoo or any search provider will be hunted down and shut down. If you read Kaplan's findings, the important distinction is the intent to link to the decss source. If I linked to slashdot, with a link that read : "Visit Slashdot, News for Nerds", and sometime, Rob decided to turn slashdot into a decss code haven, I would bet that the MPAA could not do anything to me as I never intended ot link to /. code. On the other hand, if I had "Here's the DeCSS code:", MPAA could easily be over me. Places like /. or yahoo which only accumlate data without filtering would also be exempt, because of the common carrier provider aspect (although the Napster trial questions this as well).
Making linking illegal, of course, is a violation of 1st amendment rights and hopefully will be shut down on the appeals process.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
]The district court granted a permanent
]injunction against (1) posting on any Internet
]site, or in any other way manufacturing,
]importing or offering to the public, providing,
]or otherwise trafficking in DeCSS or any other
]technology primarily designed to circumvent CSS,
]and (2) linking any Internet web site, either
]directly or through a series of links, to any
]other Internet web site containing DeCSS.
(Emphasis mine)
There was a study that showed that just like everyone in the world is no more than six degrees of separation away from everyone else in the world, every web page in the world is no more than nineteen links away from every web page in the world.
Hence, every webpage that has a link to any other webpage is linking to DeCSS through "a series of links", and hence, we're all criminals under Kaplan's ruling.
--
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
Gotta wonder...
So... AOL's illegal? Am I missing anything here?
I'm waiting for the MPAA to sue the parent corporation of one of their member companies any day now... All it would take would be one comment/complaint to hotline@mpaa.org
Now if only there was a link from mpaa.org to Warner Brothers, and so on up the ladder, they'd be illegal themselves...
Internet Explorer was unable to link to the Web page you requested. The page might use standard HTML or CSS.
Why not simply put the links/webpages on a foreign server? Anyway, I am sure there has to be a chain of links from the MPAA's website to a site with DeCSS on. That would make the MPAA's site illegal!
Or what if I link to a perl script that generates the source code? What if I don't link, but just put the URL in plain text? What if I put half the code on one site, and half the code on the other? What if a virus is spread around like melissa, that contains the code, wouldn't that be funny? What if I post the code right here in the comments section. What if the current code is obfuscated, does it still fall under Kaplan's ruling, or doesn't the exact syntax matter? What if I take out a couple ads in the New York Times that clearly displays the code? What if I get the code tatooed into my skin, would I have to be put to death? If we all sent the MPAA an e-mail containing the source and told them that's our only copy, would they believe that? What if enough people all changed their names to a line of code in the program, and they all stood next to each other while wearing name tags? What if I made an DVD with the code to decrypt DVDs on it? Kaplan sux! 1D10T!!!
What if you happened to write a test program in C++ that is supposed to only print "Hello World!" But because of an as yet unsolved bug in the program, it also accidentally decrypts DVDs?
"Freedom of speech has always been the abstract red-headed stepchild of the Constitution"
"Freedom of speech has always been the abstract red-headed stepchild of the Constitution"
-Suck
just change a few lines of code, comments etc.. and name it index.html who says source code has to follow the naming procedures ..
and i would *love* to see them try to outlaw linking to index.html :)
Still illegal ?
Nope, it's perfectly legal. It all comes down to where do you draw the line... apparently html is not considered speech. It's down (or slow) now, but take a look at 2600's documents. They have all the urls up, just without <a href="... form.
What constitutes a device anyway?
I think I am stunned that this case has gotten this far. We all knew this would be the MPAA's next step. I really hope this is a death spasm and not the action of a trade group taking advantage of a favorable ruling by a judge who has a questionable link with the trade group.
My biggest fear is too much ground will be covered with Kaplan that it will take several years to properly undo.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
Now we have a very interesting debate to consider.
Many people have already posted the idea of just editting the code to contain something extra like "removethistomakeitwork." But what is that really saying? If such edits were allowed, then isn't every hack of a PC application )to remove password checks, etc) a "new program" by following that logic?
Now we enter the field of "How much code can we steal w/o paying for it and not getting sued for it because we can claim it is different?"
You want a grey area? That's a grey continent.
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Let me give you the lowdown
This is why I really don't like copyright laws in the first place. They stifle the growth of knowledge.
bm :)-~
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
We should find out who the mpaa's service provider is and send them a letter detailing why the mpaa's website should be shut down. (CC the letter to slashdot, too, of course.) Once it is shut down, as it must be under the current ruling, the public may start to understand what this means.
Remember, information is in OUR hands now, and we can keep it this way with legal tactics like this.
-Ben
(2) linking any Internet web site, either directly or through a series of links, to any other Internet web site containing DeCSS. So If I link to a web page that later links to DeCSS am I OK or am I responsible for the actions of others? If I, for example, link to "HappyHomeCare.com" who has a link to "BobsEducationalFacts.org" who later links to a site containing DeCSS, I am in violation of the law! So now I'm not just responsible for my own actions but the actions of ALL persons who have web pages that can be traced back to my web page though a series of links! This could be millions of web pages! In effect, we can never be sure that we are not breaking the law if we link to ANYONE!
If any of those sites posted DeCSS, and who amongst us believes there were none, then DeCSS will be archived and live on in perpetuity....
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When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
Does anyone still have a copy of the (pre-trial, I THINK) information posted on the Court's web site that oops... contained DeCSS in its entirety? If so, I sure would like to see it!!!
cheers
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The facts expressed here belong to all, the opinions to me. The distinction between fact and opinion is yours to decide.
Don't worry people there are still many many servers around the world that have DeCSS. And you can't stop these so easily. How will you stop someone in Yugoslavia from posting it? Impossible. All we can do is laugh at these jerks and if someone wants to pirate movies I really don't mind.
Isn't this what copyleft is doing with there anti DVD CCA T-shirt? When you purchase one they send you a printed copy of the source code.
In federal court, jurisdiction does not determine where the ruling is binding, but where the hearing is held. Likewise, in a state court, the jurisdiction determines where in the state a case is held, but it does not bind the results of the case to that specific area.
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Ben Kosse
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Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
Does anyone know what the situation is in Canada with DeCSS, is the governement standing up to the US and ignoring this whole MPAA lawsuit, or is it letting the US push them around?
that decss song that's flitting about + good enough voice recognition software = source code in compileable form.
so, how far will this thing go now?
my policy on software is that i only buy it if it's priced reasonably. if it's not, i copy. why do i buy movies when i could get a videotape copy?? because nowadays they sell for between $9.99 and $14.99. that's called the convenience pricepoint. it's worth it for me to buy it rather than go through the hassle of finding it and copying it. if you don't meet it, you're going to get robbed. period.
this action is useless.
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And Justice for None
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And Justice for None
(Emphasis mine.)
This is preposterous.
I have a link to DeCSS on my homepage.
A former college instructor has a link to my homepage on his "Former Students" page.
This instructor's main page has a link to his "Former Students" page.
Some guy I've never heard of has a link to the instructor's main page.
Therefore, some guy I've never heard of is breaking the law because another guy I've never heard of is hosting a copy of the DeCSS software and I happen to have a link to it on my Web page.
Ridiculous. Eternal vigilence will be required to ensure that idiots like the MPAA and the RIAA don't turn the Internet into one big police state.
--
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The New World Order is upon us, and it's about damned time.
I agree that we should should try to make it way too expensive to prosecute everybody that posts links to DeCSS, but to do that by the suggested method would give the MPAA exactly what they want: few to no agenuine DeCSS's floating around.
Rather than taking copping out just short of the goal the goal of telling the MPAA to shove, I propose we go the full length by providing a ceaseless stream of valid mirrors.
In the spirit of civil disobedience, the offending law/decision should not be followed.
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If the MPAA doesn't believe that this is truly a free speech issue, why not take the battle in a new direction? DeCSS could be distributed as an attachment to a chain letter e-mail. Or, couldn't those pesky Windows VB scripts that helped the "Love Bug" flourish be used to distribute the DeCSS code to countless machines?
shut up
cuban
"On August 17, 2000, a federal district court in the Southern District of New York confirmed that offering, providing, or trafficking in DeCSS, or any other device designed to circumvent CSS, violates the DMCA. The district court granted a permanent injunction against (1) posting on any Internet site, or in any other way manufacturing, importing or offering to the public, providing, or otherwise trafficking in DeCSS or any other technology primarily designed to circumvent CSS, and..."
I didn't look up the actual text in the ruling, but here's an intersting thought. My VAIO came with software in Windows called the "Sony Media Bar." Among other things, it plays DVD's. From my understanding of the ruling, the Sony Media Bar, and any other "licensed" DVD player, hardware OR software, is a "technology primarily designed to circumvent CSS" since that is how a DVD is played. Does this make the very act of using an "Oritron" DVD player sold at Walmart for $124.94 just as illegal as using LIVID in Linux, or the Sony Media Bar under Windows? Listen up MPAA, you'd better go Sony and Walmart now, they're violating your intellectual property rights under the DMCA.
--"Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is not a path and leave a trail." - Muriel Strode
Conspiracynow.com has a copy of the most recent letter that is being sent out.
What can be done ?
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Speaking of the ACLU, what are they doing about this issue?
You are somewhat correct, however the difference is that from the Lycos Page, you can download the file WITHOUT LEAVING THE SITE. Hence: a direct link to the DeCSS software.
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
Camaron de la Isla 'When I sing with pleasure, my
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
We'll have to watch closely with what happens w/ copyleft and their t-shirts. The code on the t-shirt isn't enough to actually copy a DVD. It doesn't have any of the tables or anything- yet they're getting sued. We'll see what the MPAA can think up as a case and then you'll have your question answered...
the folks at 2600 have taken the letter of the law to mean that they can have a simple text version of the url, but not an actual link. how does this ruling effect softwares such as flyswat that creates realtime links to words that it recognizes? or the netscape 'whats related' option? what about outlook and other email clients that convert anything that begins with www into a link? i actually created the link to the offending piece of code but it was created as a result of my actions. am i resposible for sending out data that can cause a link to be created or is the software manufacurer responsible for creating it? whata a mess. so much for handy internet tools....
-- Hail Eris
My copy of decss is at http://www.penguinpowered.org.uk/stand/DeCSS.zipt ml
The links to that, and css-auth are at
http://www.penguinpowered.org.uk/wayne/index.sh
And these pages are in the U.K. Can they still sue me? More importantly, do I care ? There is no DMCA here (yet!)
/* Wayne Pascoe
let me get your post straight. You reason that because something is represented by a numerical format, that it can't be copyrighted? Um that dosen't make sense.
We all know that a book is copyrighted. would anyone care to argue that fact or tell me why a book shouldn't be copyrighted? that pretty well established and we all know that photocopying an entire book is, in fact, illegal. But by your reasoning, it wouldn't be, because afterall, a book is just the cells from a tree, and some ink made of dirt from the groud (possibly some chemicals in this day and age), and to think you could copyright plant cells and dirt is absurd.
Its not because its the idea that your copyrighting. And whether that idea is represented by plants and dirt, or by 0's and 1's, or by electrons, or by smoke signals, or...., its still the original idea, and you still can't copy it.
And besides this is not what the disscusion is about. Yes the MPAA is being very absurd. but it has nothing to do with copyrighting numbers.
To: MPAA
Subject: RE: Illegal Provision of DeCSS/Circumvention Device
Date: Thu, 31 Aud 2000 03:02:55 +1000
I am not a citizen of the United States and am therefore not subject to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(2),(3). Nor am I subject to Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. 101 et seq, and furthermore any precedent set by a federal district court has no bearing on the common law of my country.
Thankyou for your letter.
:wq
Hmmm. Reading it into Swedish Parliamentary records is not a bad idea, actually. By swedish law, anything sent to a swedish govenment, be it a letter, an e-mail or whatnot, must be archived, and, unless the material is of a more delicate kind, be made available to the public. For instance, anyone have the right to read the cookie file on a civil servant's computer in Sweden. So, let's start sending e-mails with the DeCSS code to the swedish government. (BTW, they had troubles with this a few years ago, in a pedophile court case, since the video's were stored as evidence, and evidence is public material. Suddenly, every pedophile in Sweden requested copies of the evidence material from that case, and the government had no way of denying them the right to do so, nor denying them copies of the evidence material.)