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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?
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").
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!
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
Th_ Unit__ _tat__ wa_ on__ a fr__ _ountry, but not anymor_.
matt
[This message edited by the MPAA.]
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
"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"
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
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").
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").
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.
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
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
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
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
It wasn't that tough, and I did it without using a search engine. I also avoided the "obvious" links (e.g. MPAA's own discussion of the DeCSS case).
MPAA.org links to the (interestingly named) Online Privacy Alliance (www.privacyalliance.org).
The OPA links to the EFF.
The EFF links to Cryptome.
and Bob's your uncle.
--
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
What else could I do except withdraw the deCSS stuff and relocate.
I got the quote from here. I don't know where he got it..
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!
> 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.
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!
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---
Very good point. Since DeCSS source is available (I'm assuming GPL) all one would have to do is change the code in some minor way like adding a "screwthempaa:" somewhere inside of it.
Poof new program. The MPAA then has to pay their lawyers to fight everyone again to forbid linking to CUSS. If they win against CUSS, then we produce REmoveCSS. RECSS is a whole new battle. I'd like to see a judge try to forbid everyone on the planet from ever using open sourced code in any program ever.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
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!
Motion picture DVDs store a decryption key in a special area on the disc. All writable DVDs will have that special area preburned to zeroes, so even a bitwise copy of a DVD won't work.
Unless you pre-decrypt the data with DeCSS.
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).
An excellent question.
In order to manufacture DVD players, you need to obtain a copy of the CSS decryption algorithm and a key from the DVD-CCA. Before they give you the algorithm and key, you have to sign an agreement that says that you will, among other things, never manufacture a DVD player that can output unencrypted digital video, or macrovision-free analog video.
Since a DVD player built on DeCSS would not require a license from the DVD-CCA, someone constructing a DVD player around DeCSS would not be bound by the requirement that the player only put out a degraded signal.
This would wreck the market for MPAA-crippled DVD players.
Hence, in order to prevent the appearance of DVD players on the market that are capable of putting out top quality digital video, the MPAA must fight to suppress DeCSS. Obviously they cannot eliminate it, but they can and are eliminating the possibility of circumventing their market control over what features are allowed in DVD players. In other words, their hidden agenda is succeeding, and all the talk here about making billions of copies of DeCSS completely misses the point. Copying is the red herring. It isn't what this fight is about.