Slashdot Mirror
Maryland Task Force Proposes Special Tech Courts
rkent writes: "In this NYTimes article, Microsoft makes a good point, the wrong way. They argue that their case was 'so technical and esoteric' that Judge Jackson couldn't understand it. However, the Business and Technology Division Task Force in Maryland is examining the viability of setting up special courts for tech cases. Which may or may not have helped Microsoft. But would it have helped 2600? And future Internet 'pirates?'"
Setting up special 'techno-courts' has the glossy sheen of futurism and hipness, but if the proposed high-tech courts are specialized by the content of their trials, what's to stop them from becoming self-perpetuating, invasive, and self-aggrandizing bodies within their particular fields of purported expertise, and using that expertise as a means of blocking criticism? Would such special courts be an improvement over better educating the existing judiciary?
After all, we've seen on /. a thousand times how disillusioned the technically skilled population is with many, many aspects of the law. Many people here advocate "civil disobediance" or even outright flouting of the law as a means of voicing their protests. Are these the people you want as judges in cases like 2600?
You mean people who understand the needs of the common person and not just those with money? Sounds good to me. But your scenario would never happen, they aren't go to hire the average slashdot reader to be a judge. These people will have to have law degrees and experience, just like any other judge.
It also smacks of elitism that certain cases should only be allowed to be judged by an elite cabal of "tech judges". Why should a case which involves technical concepts merit its own special type of judge, one which is likely to be biased by dint of their interests and knowledge?
Because there is no such thing as being impartial. If there was, supreme court judges would all rule in the same direction. Your biases and experiences affect how you think. On top of that, the complete ingnorance displayed by some judges in this area *is* a problem. Having to think in terms of analogies isn't good, as it seemed judge Jackson did.
Sorry, but this wouldn't solve any problems - no judge could keep up with all of the advances in the various fields of computing unless they worked in them. And if they did, you could never be sure that they were unbiased. I say we keep this elitism out of the judicial system, and stick with what we know works.
I think it might help a bit, but I worry about something different than you: that the judges chosen would be "corporate whores" worse than any that are already out there. The effectiveness of a seperate court like this depends completely on the judges chosen.
Tech companies tend to think that it's ok to get around regulations and often they do. This is because tech companies bring in high paying jobs to the community, and can get away with more than the average company. I'm afriad that in this case microsoft is just saying something like "we want a judge who will side with us, because we know we're right because we are". There is no reason to believe other tech companies would be different.
"CSS, or Content Scramble System, is an access control and copy prevention [sic] system"
Of course, CSS no more prevents a DVD from being copied than Pig Latin prevents a text from being photocopied.
My fact-checking fee is $30/hour. You owe me fifty cents (and if you hadn't been too lazy to provide a link to the decision, you'd only owe me a quarter).
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Absolutely a horrible idea. Do you want judges (any 'one' person) who presides over _MANY_ cases to be able to 'influence' the overall direction of MANY cases? Sounds like a system that will be even MORE abused than it is presently. Judges can become part of the status quo and are as much a part of the 'establishment' as anyone. That system is terribly easy to corrupt. What is necessary INSTEAD is a system where a JURY of competent Tech people preside over these cases. They are transient (cannot change the general nature or direction of Case Law) and are MUCH less corruptible (can be sequestered). They preside on the facts at hand. Once. Have little chance of being a homogenous group of any type, and can be decided in the usual Jury Selection System.
Lets NOT encourage further entrenchment of this un-holy domination of Western Civilization that Lawyers have over everything. Let them organize the courts, nothing more. But lets make CITIZENS make the rulings. What a horrible idea.
Would you Yankees stand up for yourselves? Your being overrun by corporatists and lawyers(politicians), and their using your military to overrun the rest of us. Do yourselves a favour:
It seems to me that the best way to mitigate these idiot court rulings is to ensure that the jurors selected have a clue about tech issues. I daresay that a jury packed with technically literate engineers would have a much easier time distinguishing the truth from the bombast in, for example, patent cases.
In any case, I'd feel much better with an intelligent, educated jury sitting than a bunch of randoms who were, "too stupid to get out of jury duty" (an aphorism I find rather shortsighted and offensive).
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Nothing like starting a message with flamebait!
Home truth time, boys: technical questions are not difficult.
I agree
Read Kaplan's summary of the technical issues in the DeCSS trial (I said read it, not skim a slashdot article about it).
I read the entire transcripts, the entire opinion, and the order. But, it is a bad example to prove your point since the case turns more on legal issues like copyright law than technical issues. The technical issues are not very complicated.
A trained legal brain can master any subject in its salient details.
And a trained technical brain can master any subject in its salient details. The law isn't any more complicated than technical issues.
Two Examples:
The Open DVD shows that non-lawyers can grasp the intricacies of legal concepts of copyright law.
Second, is the fact that I was involved in a pro se case. That case went to the Maryland Court of Special Appeals (we won the appeal) and also had a motion ruled in our favor that depended on the whether collateral estoppal applied to the case. The opposing lawyer was from Maryland's Attorney General Office.
Lawyers are the highest paid employees in the country
Money == Brains ???
Of course, the fact that your profession has a government enforced monopoly doesn't hurt your income.
I feel like picking a fight with everyone who thinks they are right. - Rainmakers
I do believe this is a bad idea. Its a principle of common law, enshrined in the US constitution, that justice must not only be done but be seen to be done. Having a separate system of courts that deal in things that are supposedly too hard for ordinary (read: stupid) people to understand is not going to help that goal. The implicit statement is that only supersmart people who speak techiegook are competent to judge these cases, and only similarly rarefied souls are competent to testify in them.
The likely consequence would be that ordinary folk would be reluctant to bring cases to these courts for fear of being made to look foolish. You'd end up with a hoard of especially expensive technolawyers, mostly in the pay of big corporations, who'd be the only people who could afford them. This would be a recipe for more and more pro-corporate decisions.
I know there's a certain attraction to this idea. The concept of a discrete court system that "spoke our language" seems attractive, but I don't think it would be like that at all. You'd end up with great tottering piles of incomprehensible precedent couched in a combination of techspeak and lawyerese that would effectively make the whole thing a disaster for anyone but the lawyers working it.
I'm not saying the courts don't need technical advice, and I'm not saying the existing system, where different technical witnesses slag each other off in court works well, but the answer is not to set up a new court system with even higher barriers to entry than the existing one. I quite liked the way the "silicon implants cause cancer" case was handled, where the judge appointed an expert panel that questioned the two sides expert witnesses and then gave an evaluation of the evidence in terms "the court" (ie. judges and jurors) could understand.
There's other areas that are just as specific.
Heck financial law and bearking it is a complete nightmare to follow. There have been many many tax cases in the UK that have literally cost millions and resulted in no-conviction because the details are so complex and proofing wrong doing is almost impossible.
If they are going to go for tech courts then do the job properly and have others for medical, financial and other areas.
He's not a lawyer. He's just a ****ing troll. Don't rise to it.
My fees are somewhat higher; you owe me $2,000 (sadly, my timesheet does not allow me to bill for increments of less than 1 hour. If you have any further legal questions, please feel free to ask them for the next 58 minutes.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Thats a job I could handle. For gods sakes, if i wanted to, i can write articles that would make Katz cringe...and maybe even make a vaild point or two in the process.
Isn't that a Tom Clancy book? And didn't Tom himself say that the only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction had too make sense? This is too good an idea. It will never happen.
And so the circle is completed: the courts system is correct in calling the CSS access control system a copy protection scheme because the courts have ruled to that effect.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
After all, we've seen on /. a thousand times how disillusioned the technically skilled population is with many, many aspects of the law. Many people here advocate "civil disobediance" or even outright flouting of the law as a means of voicing their protests. Are these the people you want as judges in cases like 2600?
It also smacks of elitism that certain cases should only be allowed to be judged by an elite cabal of "tech judges". Why should a case which involves technical concepts merit its own special type of judge, one which is likely to be biased by dint of their interests and knowledge?
Sorry, but this wouldn't solve any problems - no judge could keep up with all of the advances in the various fields of computing unless they worked in them. And if they did, you could never be sure that they were unbiased. I say we keep this elitism out of the judicial system, and stick with what we know works.
who gets to be the judge?
;)
how about linus?
If i was gonna get 40 lashes in a public square for using napster i'd rather have the ruling made by someone i can respect
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
We've decided that the extremely technical aspect of DNA evidence is comprehensible by the general public, why not other tech?
Elitism. High-tech companies think that they'll get a fairer shake since the tech courts will be full of pro-tech people.
Personally, I'm appalled at the thought of setting up "special courts" for anything. I'm also appalled at the thought that this might be a direct result of the govt's challenge of MS. I literally would not expect the citizenry to be able to tell the difference between the Tech Court and MS Justice 1.0, and I shudder to think of what precedents might be set by such a court. Come on, think, people; why do you think the courts are set up the way they are? Yes, there needs to be a solution to the problem of judges and lawyers who do not understand high-tech, but this ain't it.
--
--
"I find your lack of faith disturbing." -- Darth Vader
The problem is that the people we have in office now simply do not grasp technology, or grasp it and fear it. The solution is not to create special courts full of cluefulls, it is to replace the dying dinosaurs who are sucking up our tax dollars right now with people who are actually relevant to the world around them.
It is a physically simpler device. It is not inherent more special than the licensed DVD player itself.
Well I agree that having special "tech" judges is mostly unnecessary, and probably even unwise. I don't believe a "technical" judge for one is really going to be able to educate himself sufficiently in the state of every art. I think all it really requires is a fairly intelligent and unbiased judge that is willing to listen. Even though Jackson conceded he was not an expect by any means, I think Jackson's assesment of the MS case was right on the money.
Unfortunately, however, most states have really horrible courts when it comes to issues like business law. It's so bad, in fact, that many corporations have chosen to incorporate in Delaware [widely regarded as having the best], for issues beyond just tax laws. Delaware, unlike most, has adopted a certain expediency and fairness and predictability. Delaware Supreme Court had done an excellent job of monitoring the lower courts, and effectively regulating them to keep abusive lawsuits out.
We don't need "special" tech judges [if anything, business law is more demanding], we just need decent and competent judges in the state courts that are well regulated. To this end promoting judges based on merit, rather than requiring them to run for election, would make for a better system.
Got Rhinos?
I don't think you could "easily" emulate the DVD session keys just by "writing a driver". Unless you have a specialised piece of equipment, or unless you can steal them by hacking a DVD-player (this, btw, would also count as "circumventing a copy protection device" under the DMCA). What kind of technique do you have in mind? (BTW, feel free; general discussion of techniques, as opposed to the creation of tools, is very definitely protected speech for which the strict test applies.)
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Simply put, it takes time for the judiciary to catch up to any new concept. Look how long it took the civil rights movement to win in the US courts. Whatever the problems still may be, racial discrimination is no longer a socially acceptable norm. That was a far more important concept, and it took time.
It will be the same here: despite the beyond-reasonable cynicism of many geeks, in time, the courts will eventually get things more-or-less right. Nothing will ever be perfect, granted, but let's not assume that everyone except technically qualified people are incompetent to have enough of an understanding of technology to be able to apply the legal principles upon which our society is based to it. And let's please not assume that there's any link between technical competence and ethical standards.
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
(cringes at the wrath she may receive)
I've seen endless comments here about the braind-amaged rulings that keep getting made about IP issues and such. Perhaps if the court had better knowledge of the issues involved and the potential implications, high-priced corporate lawyers wouldn't be able to get away with inaccurate technojargon and better rulings might result? I mean, it's not like the rulings on these sorts of issues (with the exception of the Microsoft one) have been all that great, y'know.
--meredith
--meredith
Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis
OTOH, if the case could call for a technically qualified person in that field, maybe the two parties could pick an advisor from said case as with jury selection -- but again, the numbers of people that will be willing here would be low and this basically amounts to having the expert witness. Generally expert witnesses are supposed to be unbiased and are necessary to clear up the scientific mumblings of the law, just to so the side that does bring him in that *science*, not what the guy said, but the fundamental laws of science, are in that side's favor.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
So when the NYT reports that Microsoft thinks they got a bad decision because the judge didn't understand the technical, I am inclined to remind M$ that the specific reason they lost is that Judge J. was not only probably the most clued in judge they could have had the misfortune to come to trial with, and he gave them every chance to settle the anti-trust litigation -- and they, not he, blew every chance they had to get a better outcome for their company.
Also, AFAICT (as far as I can tell, if you're new to /., IRC, etc.) Microsof still continues to use 90% of the same unfair business practices which the Sherman acts prohibit (tying, etc.), and aren't really interested in changing the way they do business in the future.
And as a measure of whether or not their monopoly power has a negative effect on consumers: witness the rise in OEM cost for the basic x86 OS, for example -- rising from a few dollars back in the MS-DOS days, $20-40 during the early Windows days, to (last time I sold a system -- about a year ago -- I'm doing software exclusively now), $100 or more.
Which is why (on those rare days when I have extra time, like today), I work on Open Source projects or training other corporate folks in the OpenSource model of IT development. I may not be the loudest Open Source proponent, nor the most articulate, but I do know one thing: the best software choices for the future aren't centered around M$, because of the exact issues that I feel Judge Jackson correctly nailed M$ for.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Again, that's access control, not copy prevention -- the bits have indeed been copied, but the data is inaccessible.
If you have any further legal questions
You said that this discussion is to be limited to technical questions. Which is it?
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
We are in 2000 AD , ain't we?
The best judge you can expect is Judge Dredd .
Hi from Richard M Stallman Block!
__
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
1. The fact that the CSS standard is anticompetitive and leads to player lock-in is irrelevant to the DeCSS case. Contrary to what you might think, monopolistic behaviour is not illegal per se, and it certainly doesn't nullify your rights to have your copyrights respected -- including the protections of the DMCA, which whatever you might think of it, was passed by both House and Senate.
2. The Hong Kong pirates, and anyone else carrying out the piece of reverse engineering you describe, are committing an offense under the DMCA, as they are circumventing a copy protection device. CSS consists of the hardware and the encryption; an attack on either is an attack on the whole, and illegal.
Hence my point; it's much easier for a lawyer to understand the technical issues than a techie to understand the law. Lawyers don't get emotional and lose their objectivity over technical issues; the vice versa doesn't hold.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Bzzzt, wrong, thanks for playing. A bitwise copy (in the normal sense) would not include the session key tracks, and would not be playable on a normal DVD player (or for that matter, any DVD player). CSS controls copying by placing the keys in a separate place from the encrypted data, and preventing straightforward access to the key tracks. It is both a playback control and a copy protection device, and the distinction is unimportant for the purposes of the DMCA in any case.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
to understand "leveraging a monopoly in one sector to gain an advantage in another sector", - M$ft are masters of the "if you can't dazzle them with brillance, blind them with bullshit" game - heck, I use technical obfuscation myself sometimes to get my way, if you can get your judge to think, "Hmmm, I don't understand, so he must be right." The problem in the M$ft case is they finally came up against someone who wouldn't fall for that crap. This idea smacks of jury packing. It's doesnt' matter if you monopoly is a railroad, an electric company, a waterworks, or DOS - technical competance has nothing to do with it. Msft had plenty of opportunity to interpret their case to the judge, and explain just how integrating an add on commodity internet browser into their monopoly OS was NOT an anticompetitive act to give their backward (at the time) product a leg up in the market, just as integrating a word processor into their monopoly OS would be anticompetitive in the word processor application market.
Those guys need a precipitous drop from the sublime to the rediculous. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
Hmmm, StarOffice for $39.95.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Uh - how can people in Hong Kong commit an offense under the DMCA, as they don't live in the U.S.A.?
Yes, they can commit offenses under international copyright laws (such as making copies unauthorised by the copyright holder that do not fall under the heading of 'fair use'), but I have this strange feeling that the fscked up shit that went into the DMCA (like circumventing & reverse-engineering access control mechanisms) doesn't quite fall under that heading.
K.
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
Imagine eJudges sitting in eCourts and applying eLaws (and iLaws) to ePeople and eCompanies. What do you, eGeeks and iNerds think?
My latest stint of jury duty convinced me that the problem isn't completely with the courts, but also with the jurors. At least half of our number was ruled completely by emotion rather than logic. If you hope to get an outcome that has any congruity with reality, you're going to have to get rid of these people. Of course, when reality is against you, these are exactly the folks you want. Which is why it'll probably never happen.
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
Should the exercise of copyright enable monopolistic behaviour? This is an ethical issue, not a point of law.
Point 2. The pirates who have done this are in many circumstances are operating outside of the jurisdiction of the DMCA. And they did their reverse engineering before the DMCA took effect.
Which leads to another point. Simplying XORing the data-stream would have been sufficient, if all you wanted was legal protection using this anti-reverse-engineering clause. As it stands, CSS session keys are simply too weak. Software players exist to brute force the key and they work, I am told.
The DMCA itself also allows for the reverse-engineering for interoperability. As it is, LiViD is a effort to do so for the Linux platform. That it had to use code suggested by DeCSS should not detract from this goal.
Bzzzt, wrong, thanks for playing. A bitwise copy (in the normal sense) would not include the session key tracks, and would not be playable on a normal DVD player (or for that matter, any DVD player). CSS controls copying by placing the keys in a separate place from the encrypted data, and preventing straightforward access to the key tracks. It is both a playback control and a copy protection device, and the distinction is unimportant for the purposes of the DMCA in any case.
What kind of crack are you smoking? A perfect copy of the DVD is easily possible and they are created all of the time. The Keys are on the DVD, otherwise their existence would be pointless. Anything on the DVD is physically copyable. CSS does not prevent this.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
why not have different laws for different professions? "Five years? That's nothing. You're lucky you aren't a bricklayer; they get 10 years for murder!".
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
The keys are on separate tracks of the DVD, which are read separately from the reading of the output. It is not possible to "Physically copy" the key tracks without licensing a special piece of equipment, or without reverse engineering a DVD player to gain access to the read signal from the key tracks. This second activity also counts as "circumventing a copy protection device".
But the copy protection device being circumvented is NOT CSS, it's a physical measure. CSS is not what prevents copying and DECSS does not bypass the physical protection method. DECSS does not circumvent copy protection, it circumvents playback protection.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
I believe we would not see any more 'fair' justice. I do not believe that judge Kaplan would have had a different verdict had he been better informed regarding the relevant technologies.
OJ proved (the following civil case against him vindicated this view point) the the outcome of a trial in the US can be bought.
Having technology courts in the US may help, but does not tackle the cause of the problem.
Slashdot Beta should die a painful death.
Why do I suddenly come to think of when the judge ordered that Kevin Mitnick not have access to a phone from his prison cell in fear that he might somehow continue his hacking spree by whistling into the telephone...
I hope at least they would require so type of degree in CS for the judges. What would the requirement be for the judges that they are Office Certified? Or will they have a team of experts with a head Judge controling them? THis has alot of merit if it is done right.
2) Unfortunately, there are too many issues at stack *right now* that by the time the tech courts would be in place, these issues would have exhausted their appeals process. Take a look at the problems with the Patent office in getting computer technological compenent people into place.
3) Very very commonly, cases involving sciences use an expert witness, generally a scientist or engineer that is unrelated to the case but an expert in the field. I would think a similar system would work for computer experts, however, there is something of an informal fraternity of geekdome throughout this area, so that finding a computer expert that was imparital to the deCSS case would probably be very difficult. But I don't see why this can't be attempted at least.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
And ex-governors doing jail time.... I love living in MD, honest!
Ladies, gentlemen, and /.ers, the problem is not just in the Judiciary. Even Judge Patel admitted that the DMCA has created a monumental legal snafu. A snafu which, I should point out, began in the Legislative branch where the laws were first written.
DMCA is policy laundering from no one else but Bill and Al. They failed to even get this piece of crap considered--until they ran overseas and got a treaty that we then had to enforce. This whole business is about Bill Clinton and Al Gore trying to enslave the world at the behest of their money weilding supporters...the corporations.
And even if this gets to the Federal level, remember that the judges are appointed by the Executive branch, with the approval of the Legislative branch. They have always had the ability to stack the Judiciary with whatever judges they want, and have done so for the past few decades.
Kaplan is a Clinton appointee and about as corrupt. Can you imagine what a Gore appointee would be like? They'd all have to think that Al invented the internet to get on the bench.
Please also note the 7th Amendment, which says you have a right to trial by jury in cases where more than 20 bucks is involved. Juries, on the whole, are out of the process at the federal level because they can't be bought and paid for with MPAA and RIAA money nearly as easily.
In space, no one can hear you moo.
My basic solution to all of this court misconduct by both judges and prosecutors is actually have them accountable. Plus, get rid of about 90% of the courts and 99% of the laws that go with them.
End all judicial and prosicutorial immunity and have them subject to an automatic, maximum penalty that the accused was threatened with when the misconduct occurred.
Perhaps that would set a general mood that courts are not the playground of leagal BS mumbo-jumbo and that the court workers are not above the law.
Now, for the 2600 case in particular, maybe if the bench verdict was appealed to a jury some sensable verdict might be reached. However, even though I ain't no lawyer, I do not think that a jury is an option.
<rant>
BTW, you do NOT have a right to a jury trial, you have a right to "due process", does not have to include a jury (or in the case of the IRS, a real court or judge). Unfortuantely, the government, entertainment industry and news media, have given the general public plenty of misinformation about the court process and what "due process" really is.
Maybe holding the courts to that fantasy that they wis perpetuated outside of their big oak doors would work? Where everybody gets read their rights (no longer required almost anyplace), court appointed lawyers actually win cases, warrants must be filled out and signed to be admissable, nobody is coerced, rights to various hearings are never signed away to be moved to a better part of the jail, etc. (review the actions of the state in the Mitnick case).
Might that knock a dent in that 98% fed "conviction" rate and maybe the USA would not be the home to 25% (or is it 50%) of the whole world's prisoners?
</rant>
Visit DC2600
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
The above is the quality that you get when beurocrats are given any power over your life.
Exactly. What happens in that specialised tax court will likely also happen in a specialised tech court. Specialised judges will simply not be impartial because they know too much, and have over time formed too many personal opinions that will interfere with their impartiality.
As a judge (or lawyer?) said some distance up in this discussion, judges and lawyers are the most intelligent people in American society. As he said, a good judge (or lawyer) will be able to grasp the necessary knowledge about any field within a short time, from aerodynamics in case of a plane crash case to structural engineering in an unsafe building case. A judge should gather facts and knowledge about a field he previously had no knowledge about and draw an impartial conclusion based on only those relevant facts and knowledge.
Another reason why a tech court would probably be a bad thing is, how do you decide whether a judge has technical knowledge and in what fields? There's way too much risk of big corporations influencing judges by means other than relevant facts.
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
No, you can use a bit-for-bit copy if you can find some way of generating the session keys. The scrambling of the content, plus the inaccessibility of the session keys, together, go to make up CSS.
I don't think you could "easily" emulate the DVD session keys just by "writing a driver". Unless you have a specialised piece of equipment, or unless you can steal them by hacking a DVD-player (this, btw, would also count as "circumventing a copy protection device" under the DMCA). What kind of technique do you have in mind? (BTW, feel free; general discussion of techniques, as opposed to the creation of tools, is very definitely protected speech for which the strict test applies.)
Disclaimer: I think you're an idiot.
A bitwise copy of the DVD would be playable in a standard DVD player. CSS does not prevent the creation of a bit for bit copy of the DVD. Hence CSS does not prevent Mass Pirateing of a DVD. CSS only controls playback by disallowing playback on non MPAA approved players. From this we can draw the following conclusion: CSS is a playback control device, not a copyprotection device.
The addition of 'special equipment' into the picture is irrelevant.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
It is to point out that CSS does nothing to actually control copying, and everything to control access. If these pirates can copy DVD's without circumventing any copy-protection, then Why is CSS necessary? Why does the MPAA not go after the Big Time Pirates (they are certainly rich enough to do this) but instead go after the people who have bought DVD's, and (by using DeCSS), desire to buy more DVDs?
Interesting discussion nonetheless.
:)) I'm starting to think the differance between a computer scientist and a computer hacker is the scientist writes software for a living but...
Lawyers don't get emotional and lose their objectivity over technical issues; the vice versa doesn't hold.
There was a joke about the differance between a farmer and a redneck - the farmer raises cattle, but the redneck gets emotionally involved
BTW - not everyone here are 'kids' (41)
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Our Technology and Construction Court was founded in 1890 to try cases with a heavyweight technical dimension; they cover any case that has any kind of tech angle from big civil engineering to pcbs (and I've handled cases from both ends of the spectrum there). What follows is a practitioner's view.
The judges are drawn from the bar who practice in that field of law. They're people who understand the industries they have before them as a result of working as part of the legal support of those industries for twenty or more years before elevation to the bench.
That's the theory: the practice is less than a hundred per cent as in anything with people involved. I could, but won't, name a couple of T&C judges who are blithering old idiots.
That said, I can name still others who are sharp, incisive and know their stuff very well and who aren't afraid to inform themselves on the way things work (I know at least on judge at T&C in London who knows how HTML works, principally because I explained it to him).
The software copyright and confidentiality angle is dealt with by the Chancery Division of the High Court, whose judges have a solid grounding in these sorts of issues through hearing cases and, increasingly, through having been practitioners.
Choice of forum is left to the litigants, by and large: if it's more hardware or software engineering, go to T&C. If it's copyrights, designs and patents, go to Chancery. Sometimes it's a judgment call between the two, but I think the essence of it is that either way you get a professional judge rather than <flame> an elected buffoon with the professional standards of a chartered accountant.</flame>
-- AndrewD
A Maze of Twisty Little Laws, All Different.
Now that, my man, is a sweet troll. Much better than my effort below. Watch 'em flock to it. Mad props.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
I think this is dangerous, just one more way the government is trying to rein in the computer industry.
The computer industry thrives on competition, anything interfering with that competition will hurt the computer industry.
Can you imagine what would have happened if Novell sued Microsoft for including non IPX protocols in Windows? We'd still be stuck running IPX intead of IP, forget about having an internet.
Can you imagine what would have happened in DEC had sued Novell over networking software? We'd still be stuck in the stone ages on networking, rampant competition is good for the consumer.
Linux sure hasn't needed any government help to battle Microsoft, eventually the free hand of the marketplace catches up with everyone, and then bitchslaps them.
If this government interference keeps up, I can only see the US computer industry being saddled and tied down with regulations and litigation fears, like Europes, and the quickest computer innovations will probabaly take place elsewhere, Japan probably, just like Gibson predicted.
This strikes me as exactly the wrong thing to do. To attack the problem of public (and courthouse) knowledge of technical issues, we ought to be encouraging ways to increase the public's exposure to technical issues. If we segregate them in a special justice system, we segregate technical people into a "special" group, which would be subject to resentment from the public at large. It would create a formalized, legally enforced, "class society".
Yes, specilized courts like tax courts are evil. The solution to things like the DeCSS case is really to (a) make conflict of intrest a much bigger crime (and make it easy to convict a judge like Kaplan of conflict of interest) and (b) make going to industry lobing seminars a conflict of interest.
I would say a judge making a decission like Kaplans should be tried for conflict of interest for mearly having been to several seminars which can be shown to have been intended to influence his opinion. now, he would not be convicted untill the content of those seminars was fully examined (i.e. did the experence create an "interest"), but the fact that he would need to stand trial should prevent many problems.
I would say we also need some kind of anti-matching fund for lobists or a lobist tax to limit the effectivness of spending large ammounts of money on lobing judges and representitives. If your corperate lobists spend $1 million dollars then their oposing lobists (like consumer activists or enviromentalists) recieve $100,000 (10%) of that money to spend on countering your expendatures. This would help keep the lobists plaing field even, so representitives would hear all the diffrent opinions that they need to hear.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
The legitimate players giving customers a way to break the rgion encoding too, is a circumvention device.
The old Xing player, which cannot view newly produced DVDs (becuase of the revocation of the player keys) is also attempting to circumvent copy protection.
When licensed players view unencrypted content, it is circumventing the copy protection. (Becuase the Content happens to be GPLed, and cannot be subject to restrictions imposed by the MPAA cartel.)
Weaselly streetlawyer vs slashdot geek - who will win?
If and when Hong Kong adopts the DMCA, it may not be the case that these DVD stamping factories are illegal. They merely stamp. Who circumvented the copy protection on the original DVD? The real culprit is unknown, and the MPAA would probably never know. Nevermind - let's persecute these guys under the DMCA becuase they are copying.
Face it. DMCA + CSS = screwed up, half-assed legislation.
Anyone who have read transcripts from Judge Jackson know that he knew what he was talking about. Microsoft IS a monopoly, just like AT&T and many others before. When a huge company strangles the market, killing off all competition, something must be done by the government.
While it may be interesting to argue technicalities in a court of Law, the fact is most of these "tech-cases" are about freedom and other Law-issues. However, Microsoft wants to argue details about how to implement an OS with a browser "their way", which is completely besides the point and the final ruling. Tech-issues would only shift the focus AWAY from important issues, like freedom, privacy and general legality, which is what courts are all about.
"Tech-courts" would be a VERY BAD THING. It would fragment an already complex court-system further. I suspect it could become yet another loop-hole for huge corporations, funding whatever judges they want this week.
What is Microsoft basically saying here?
"The hell with the Judges, we want our own courts!!"
Everyone everywhere should cringe at the very thought of this. Educate the Judges on technical issues, don't replace your legal system.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Setting up special 'techno-courts' has the glossy sheen of futurism and hipness, but if the proposed high-tech courts are specialized by the content of their trials, what's to stop them from becoming self-perpetuating, invasive, and self-aggrandizing bodies within their particular fields of purported expertise, and using that expertise as a means of blocking criticism? Would such special courts be an improvement over better educating the existing judiciary?
/.) get bamboozeled by the "self-aggrandizing bodies within their particular
fields of purported expertise". This is certainly not justice.
We already have a perfect example of how specilized courts work (actually, they don't work very well) and that is called Tax Court.
What happens in any of these ivory tower systems is that the common folks (including those of us on
The 2600 case was one of pure bias, no decision in that case was backed up by any fact, and it would have probably been worse in a specialized court. It happens in "tax court" every day: state brings charges, state inflicts punishment, you have to prove yourself not-guilty.
I wish that I had the refrence for a glairing case of this from just a couple of years ago. An individual had paid his tax bill. The IRS cashed his check. Taxpayer had the cancelled check and bank records that the money left his bank and went to the IRS bank. The bank that the IRS used to clear the check lost the money. The IRS went after the tax payer. No matter how many times he produced the cancelled check the IRS said "we still do not have payment". The tax court ordered the guy to pay again! Now, if a group of "regular folks" had gotten to hear this case, it would have ruled for the tax payer, since the poor guy does not run the bank and all, but an "expert court" ruled the other way.
The above is the quality that you get when beurocrats are given any power over your life.
Visit DC2600
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
I think this could work, but it has to be done sensibly. In the UK we have specialist family courts, and various kinds of specialist commercial courts. The judges are still judges, meeting theusual criteria for the job, but, since they work in the specialized courts, they build up a general background knowledge in their area.
A tech court judge would not be expected to know everything about every topic they would be called upon to judge, but they would be in a better starting position to understand when one or other side tried to explain the technical background of their argument. The tech courts might also have special rules or procedures, for example allowing the court to appoint neutral expert assessors, or allowing more streamlined procedures for complex technical submissions. They would also be an expert on the most relevant areas of the law
Could be worth trying, but needs to be done sensibly.